It's...

TRUMP WORLD !

We're All Just Living in It

Trump World, day 50 (Mon., 3/10, 3 PM EDT):

• Unable even to agree with each other over a federal budget, congressional Republicans are attempting to extend the current budget through September. If that proposal cannot gather 60 votes in the Senate (meaning that it needs at least seven Democrats), the federal government will shut down on Saturday.
  
  
• The Trump administration is repurposing the website that formerly allowed migrants to request asylum. Now, if you use the site, you will be literally signing up for voluntary deportation.
  
  
• ICE have taken a former Columbia University student (who has a green card), whose only crime was pro-Palestinian protests.
  
  
• Ontario has proceeded with a 25% surcharge on the electricity it delivers to Minnesota, Michigan, and New York.
  
  
• X is being repeatedly brought down by a massive cyberattack.
  
  
• The federal government will no longer provide free COVID test kits.
  
  
• “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” — Elon Musk, 2/26
  
  

Trump World, day 49 (Sun., 3/9, 1 PM EDT):

• Israel is shutting off the electricity to Gaza.
  
  
• The Secretary of Homeland Security feels like it’s not catching enough immigrants in ICE raids, so they are administering polygraph tests to their employees to see if anyone is leaking information.
  
  
• Dozens of deportees from the U.S. were sent to a remote camp in Panama. After complaints of human rights violations occurring there, the deportees have been released, but they are penniless in Panama and being given 30 days to leave the country, with no way to do so.
  
  
• As an example of damage done, Lindt (the Swiss chocolate makers) are now shipping directly from Europe to Canada instead of through U.S. importers, to avoid all the tariff nonsense.
  
  
• The Secretary of Health and Human Services is attacking seed oils (like canola and corn oil) as unsafe, and recommending beef tallow for cooking instead. There’s no science to suggest that seed oils are worse for you than beef tallow, only the opposite.
  
  
• Among at least 26,000 photos and posts targeted for deletion by the Department of Defense as “DEI” are many photos of women and people of color, simple because they show women and people of color. Also targeted are photos of the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima) because those photos accurately show the word “Gay” was painted on it.
  
  

There was no actual update posted on day 48, just some clippings.

Trump World, day 47 (Fri., 3/7, 2 PM EST):

• At a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump told the department heads that Musk isn’t authorized to fire anyone, but only to recommend that they do it themselves. The Hill reports that Trump made this statement after things became heated between Musk and the Secretaries of State and Transportation, who were trying to defend their departments. The Secretary of State, in particular, was shouting back and forth with Musk until Trump stepped in.
  
  
• Trump has blocked the U.S. from providing military intelligence or surveillance to Ukraine. He is reportedly also planning to deport 240,000 Ukrainians who are here legally, fleeing from the war.
  
  
• In an attempt to conceal his collusion with Putin, he says he is also considering additional tariffs against Russia, though there is little left that isn’t already sanctioned.
  
  
• After just rolling some back, Trump is planning to add more tariffs to Canada as soon as this afternoon, as well as additional tariffs next week on steel and aluminum from all sources. Canada is not rolling back anything, unless all the tariffs against them are lifted.
  
  
• With the Supreme Court’s backing, the judge in the USAID case (who is clearly and rightly fed up) is giving the Trump administration until Monday evening to begin restoring frozen foreign aid, with concrete verifiable steps documented.
  
  
• The judge who ruled that the federal funding freeze within the U.S. be suspended apparently issued that ruling in such a way that it only benefited the 22 states whose (Democrat) attorneys general brought the suit. Other (mostly Republican) states can still have their funding frozen.
  
  
• Homeland Security is unilaterally ending its collective bargaining agreement with the Transportation Safety Authority’s union. If allowed to stand, DOGE will be able to cut TSA workers, making lines even longer at airports.
  
  
• Federal marshals forced DOGE’s way into the offices of the independent U.S. African Development Foundation yesterday. Once inside, they expelled the staff and changed the locks.
  
  
• The EPA is being told that it cannot sign off on any new contracts over $50,000 unless DOGE approves.
  
  
• The Trump administration is canceling $400 million in contracts and grants with Columbia University, for allowing pro-Palestinian protests. Other universities have begun dialing back admissions and scholarships for the fall semester, not trusting the federal government. Some students who have already been accepted to schools are having their acceptances revoked, with letters apologizing but explaining the uncertainty of continued funding.
  
  
• Target is under a 40-day boycott. Amazon is under a 7-day boycott. Anecdotally, Amazon saw a substantial hit from the economic blockout on February 28th, but they did not publicly reveal that.
  
  
• The Texas measles outbreak is up to 228 known infected, 1 confirmed dead, +1 probable. By itself, this one outbreak already represents more cases than the U.S. saw in an entire year for 21 of the past 25 years.
  
  
• Trump’s CDC is launching a new study to check for links between vaccines and autism, even though those links have already been widely disproven.
  
  
• Yesterday, it was announced that Maine (just Maine) could no longer register births and deaths electronically with the Social Security Administration. Today, that policy was reversed with an apology, but no explanation. This change would have meant that parents of newborns couldn’t request a social security card through the hospital, nor could funeral homes register deaths. Some Mainers would have had to drive hours to reach the nearest Social Security office in person.
  
  
• There is a proposed bill in Florida (HB 75) that would make it illegal for “governmental entities” to display Pride flags. The same bill would explicitly allow retired or current armed forces members to use “reasonable force” to prevent the desecration of American flags or to place them upright and above all other flags on display.
  
  

Trump World, day 46 (Thur., 3/6, 2 PM EST):

• Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was removed from the audience at Trump’s speech Tuesday night, when he wouldn’t stop confronting Trump about his lies. This morning, the House (including a few Democrats) voted to censure Green, which is a complaint with no real teeth. After the vote, as the Speaker formally read the censure aloud, Green was surrounded by Democrats singing the protest anthem “We Shall Overcome.” Then the floor of the House degenerated into a shouting match. The Speaker called it “a really sad day for our institution.”
  
  
• The judge who had temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing *any* congressionally approved funding has now made that block permanent, and delivered a lengthy, harsh rebuke to the administration about the Constitutional separation of powers. “Without the injunction, Congressional control of spending will have been usurped by the Executive without constitutional or statutory authority.”
  
  
• A second judge ruled that funding must be restored to the National Institutes of Health, who provide life-saving medical research.
  
  
• However, a third judge refused to reinstate canceled USAID contracts, saying that that was essentially a contract dispute over which he had no jurisdiction.
  
  
• The Trump administration is proposing 45 days to restore funding to USAID. The court would have to agree to this ridiculously extended timeline. The plaintiffs want the money by Monday night, and even that is much longer than the judge has repeatedly directed.
  
  
• The United Nations is warning that the still-ongoing U.S. foreign aid freeze is forcing them to “choose which lives not to save.” They have released $110 million in emergency funds to help shore up the worst hit areas.
  
  
• Trump has again backed off from some of his tariffs against Mexico, given the broad danger to the U.S. economy. Mexico did not capitulate in any meaningful way. The Secretary of Commerce says some of the goods from Canada will be exempted as well.
  
  - Based on Canada’s comments yesterday, “some” will not satisfy them. Their prime minister said today that he expects a trade war with the U.S. to continue “for the foreseeable future.”
  
  
• After he helped government agencies resist Trump dramatically this week, an appeals court reinstated the firing of government watchdog Hampton Dellinger. Although he could take his case to the Supreme Court, it might take months, which would be too late to stop Trump’s path of destruction. So Dellinger has conceded and quit.
  
  
• Four groups are suing the National Endowment for the Arts, saying that Trump’s “gender ideology” ban violates the first and fifth amendments, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.
  
  
• The CDC is attempting to rehire 180 people it fired, including workers connected to the situations with measles and bird flu, but not everyone is willing to come back to such an uncertain work environment.
  
  
• Politico reports that the Trump administration is holding “secret” talks with Zelenskyy’s political opponents, trying to turn Ukraine against him.
  
  
• The Social Security Administration is now blocking their remaining staff from using government-issued devices to check the news.
  
  
• Under pressure from Trump, the mayor of Washington D.C. is removing Black Lives Matter Plaza.
  
  
• Texas has introduced a state bill (HB 3817) to create a new crime of “gender identity fraud.” This bill would make it a felony to tell your employer or any “governmental entity” that you are a gender other than your “biological sex assigned at birth.” The “crime” would reportedly carry a punishment of up to two years in prison or a $10,000 fine.
  

Photo: a post about Trump

Trump World, day 45 (Wed., 3/5, 3 PM EST):

• The Supreme Court ruled today (5-4) that the funding for USAID must be restored. They ordered the Trump administration to comply and directed the lower court (which had previously made that ruling) to “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
  
  - In response, the lower court’s judge has given the Trump administration until 11 AM tomorrow to provide a status report and its plan (with dates and steps) for restoring USAID funding.
  
  - Pete Marocco (who Trump put in charge of USAID to destroy it) will not directly answer whether he will comply with the court’s order.
  
  
• Hampton Dellinger (Special Counsel, who was reinstated by the courts after Trump fired him) asked the Merit Systems Protection Board (which agreed) to reinstate 5,000 probationary employees from the Department of Agriculture, following Trump’s improper mass firing. Dellinger further stated he is “calling on all federal agencies to voluntarily and immediately rescind any unlawful terminations of probationary employees.”
  
  
• Nonetheless, Veterans Affairs is looking to cut 80,000 (16%) of its employees, and the IRS 50,000 (50%).
  
  
• The General Services Administration published a list of 443 buildings (“non-core assets”) that the Trump administration can put up for sale. Included on that list were the headquarters of Medicare and Medicaid. When that was pointed out, they took down the entire list.
  
  
• Calls are growing online to not pay federal income taxes this year. The argument — which may have some merit — boils down to Americans currently being subject to taxation without representation. Per the Constitution, Congress controls government spending, but under Trump that isn’t happening consistently. However, this matter should probably be taken to the courts, rather than simply not paying.
  
  
• Trump has made U.S. automakers temporarily exempt from his new tariffs. He plans even more tariffs on April 2nd.
  
  
• China’s embassy posted on X last night: “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”
  
  
• The Prime Minister of Canada will not remove his tariffs unless Trump removes *all* of his first. He noted that Trump is starting a trade war with its closest allies while “appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense.”
  
  
• Idaho’s abortion ban prohibits emergency abortions, unless doctors can *prove* the mother will die. The Biden administration had taken them to court over this detail (which conflicts with federal law), but the Trump administration is dropping the case.
  
  
• Trump claimed last night that the U.S. has taken back the Panama Canal. The president of Panama replied that this is Trump “lying again.” An American group has bought a controlling interest in the Hong Kong-based company that administers the ports at each end of the canal. We have not taken control of the canal.
  
  
• United24, an official fundraising organization for the Ukraine war, is raffling off 100 T-shirts with “I’ll wear the costume when this war is over.” https://donorbox.org/help-ukraine-finish-the-war...
  
  
• A congressman from California has nominated Trump for the Nobel peace prize, saying “No one deserves it more.”
  

Photos: the statue at the residence of the French ambassador, outside Washington D.C.; a headline from the Wall Street Journal; a post from Tim Walz; and a meme referencing that Trump and his businesses have declared bankruptcy six times

Trump World, day 44 (Tue., 3/4, 3 PM EST):

• Trump has suspended all aid to Ukraine.
  
  
• Trump’s administration has specifically instructed CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, which is part of Homeland Security) to stop monitoring Russia and to *ignore* observed threats from them.
  
  
• The Department of Defense has ordered a cessation of all planning for digital attacks or counterattacks against Russia. Trump has previously reassigned workers who used to protect the security of our elections.
  
  
• The message is clear: Trump *wants* Russia to interfere in our elections, and to have their hands inside our infrastructure. He is manifestly in league with Putin.
  
  
• Trump’s new tariffs are in effect. Canada, Mexico, and China are replying with tariffs of their own. I haven’t verified this, but reports are that the last trade war this severe was in 1930, at the start of the Great Depression.
  
  
• Trump is threatening to raise his tariffs even higher in response to Canada’s. If Canada places theirs at 25%, Trump will make his 50%, he says.
  
  
• The premier of Ontario is threatening to cut off his supply of power to New York, Minnesota, and Michigan if the situation deteriorates further.
  
  
• Warren Buffett (famous investor) issued rare public remarks, calling the U.S. tariffs “an act of war.”
  
  
• Target and Best Buy are among many companies warning that their prices will quickly go higher because of the tariffs.
  
  
• The former commissioner of the Social Security Administration says that the specific cuts being made nationwide by DOGE (45 SSA field offices’ leases are already canceled) will cause the social security system to “collapse” with an “interruption in benefits” in the next 90 days. Social Security provides assistance to one-fifth of the American population.
  
  
• After warning of a 1.5% contraction of the entire American economy a few days ago, the Atlanta Federal Reserve is now projecting a contraction of 2.8%. Some news organizations are calling the pending economic wreckage the Trumpcession.
  
  
• Observing this, the Secretary of Commerce is proposing we change how gross domestic product is calculated, to mask the damage Trump is doing.
  
  
• Trump posted: “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or depending on the crime, arrested.”
  
  
• Trump appears to be talking specifically about punishing any free speech or free assembly he doesn’t agree with. He is threatening to cut over $50 million in contracts with Columbia University alone, for allowing pro-Palestinian protests.
  
  
• The new Secretary of Education (who was just confirmed) is committed to dismantling that department, as Trump has commanded. She has begun communicating with her department about their “final mission.”
  
  
• Trump has again mentioned his intention to create a national cryptocurrency reserve. Cryptocurrency has no inherent value, and creating a national reserve is a waste of the money he’s supposedly trying to save. It will push up the value of his own crypto holdings, though.
  
  
• There is an anti-money laundering law that requires shell companies to declare who owns them. Congress passed the law (and overrode Trump’s veto) in 2021. The Trump organization is fond of shell companies. Trump just announced that his administration will stop enforcing that law, and called his announcement “Exciting news!”
  
  
• A bill from the House was intended to keep transgender females out of female sports nationwide. That bill failed to pass in the Senate. The bill had reportedly called for genital inspections before allowing girls (all girls) to participate in girls’ sports.
  
  
• Citing the non-existent energy emergency, Trump has directed federal agencies to allow heavy (otherwise strictly controlled) commercial logging on federal lands. Now they can clear cut our forests.
  
  
• Since the $250 bill idea didn’t get any traction, there’s a new proposal in the House to put Trump’s face on the $100 bill.
  
  

There was no update posted on day 43.

Trump World, day 42 (Sun., 3/2, 3 PM EST):

• Protests occurred nationwide yesterday, many grassroots and local. Three of particular note:
  
  - Over a thousand people gathered in Vermont, to protest against Vance, who went there for a ski weekend. One sign read, “Vance is a traitor. Go ski in Russia.”
  
  - Reportedly, over 10,000 people protested at Tesla dealerships nationwide yesterday. More such protests are already planned for next Saturday.
  
  - Even in the little town nearest to me (pop. 1,700), there was a protest of roughly 400 people.
  
  
• Tesla’s stock price is way down. One disgruntled significant shareholder posted to Musk on X: “Please share five things you did for Tesla shareholders this week. Or are you working remotely? Asking for all of us.”
  
  
• A billionaire investor in Mexico has canceled a $7 billion contract with StarLink, deciding to go in a different direction with his $22 billion Latin American infrastructure project.
  
  
• Most (though not all) U.S. Republican leadership continues to blame Ukraine for Friday’s debacle. The White House is spinning it hard as a win for Trump’s “America first” approach, sending operatives to celebratory interviews on major TV networks this weekend.
  
  - The Speaker of the House says Zelenskyy may have to resign as president for a peace agreement to be made: “Either [Zelensky] needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that.”
  
  - A spokesman for the Kremlin says Russian and American foreign policies are now “in alignment.” England and France may act as intermediaries for Ukraine in negotiations for a ceasefire, if the U.S. is speaking for Russia.
  
  
• The White House confirmed today that it supports Israel in blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza, until Hamas agrees to extend the ceasefire. Egypt notes that using starvation as a weapon is a war crime. This is the sort of reason why Israeli leadership are wanted by the International Criminal Court.
  
  
• At an interview on Friday night, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” This is being taken as a further threat, as at least 7,000 workers are already being fired from the understaffed Social Security Administration.
  
  
• The Department of Education is offering workers a single severance payment of up to $25,000 if they resign by tomorrow night.
  
  
• The U.S. Mint has been selling a coin commemorating the officers who protected the Capitol on January 6th. That coin is no longer available.
  
  

Trump World, day 41 (Sat., 3/1, 3 PM EST):

• The Federal Reserve in Atlanta had, until last week, been projecting satisfactory growth of 2.3% in the nation’s gross domestic product during the first quarter. They are now projecting negative 1.5%. This may sound like a small change, but what this means is that they are expecting the entire economy of the United States to contract under all the pressures Trump has applied to it.
  
  - The last two periods of sustained economic contraction began in 2020 (COVID) and 2008 (the Great Recession), each at the end of a period of Republican presidential leadership that damaged the economy. Biden averted a full-on depression after Trump part 1 and COVID, but Trump part 2 is quickly undoing all Biden’s good work.
  
  
• A judge has placed a long-term block on Trump’s executive orders that restricted transgender care for minors and restricted funding for institutions who provide transgender care to anyone.
  
  
• Iowa had included “gender identity” in its current laws for civil rights protection. Yesterday, they removed that phrase. Per NBC News, this is the first time any U.S. state has removed the civil rights from any previously-protected group of people.
  
  
• Some federal employees have received another “what did you do last week?” email, that says they will be asked that question every week going forward. This week’s email, however, tells people how to reply if what they did was sensitive information.
  
  
• Following yesterday’s Oval Office argument, 14 Democratic state governors signed a statement of solidarity with Ukraine. Republican state governors largely rallied around Trump. Russian leadership celebrated, and called it “Brilliant!” All but two of the countries in Europe expressed support for Ukraine, but some are also concerned over whether things can be mended or whether they as a group can stand against Russia without the United States.
  
  
• Europe has begun discussing its own ability to raise sufficient nuclear weapons to stand as a deterrent against Russia’s arsenal. The unspoken subtext is that they may also need a nuclear deterrent against the United States, if it sides with Russia.
  
  

Trump World, day 40 (Fri., 2/28, 2 PM EST):

• A meeting today between Trump and Zelenskyy became openly antagonistic in front of the press, after Zelenskyy pointed out that Putin cannot be trusted and Trump tried to coerce Zelenskyy into concessions, “You're either going to make a deal or we're out.” Vance made it worse by telling Zelenskyy he was being disrespectful and should be thankful. By the time the row was over, Zelenskyy had left without signing Trump’s minerals deal and Trump accused Zelenskyy of gambling with World War III.
  
  - Be particularly observant of political spin in coverage of this one. Trump’s Department of Defense leadership and MAGA cronies, of course, have sided with him. Most of the world are siding with Zelenskyy. This, in turn, is likely to further strain U.S. relations with the European Union.
  
  
• During the recent House recess, members of Congress in several Republican states held town halls that went poorly, as constituents railed against what’s happening to the federal government. Rather than take this as a sign to rein in Trump and DOGE, House Republican leadership has now instructed its members to not have any more public town halls, only private ones in which they have vetted the audience members to make sure they’re supportive.
  
  
• The White House insists that America loves what it’s doing. This is becoming very reminiscent of Russian state media propaganda. Even Fox News is starting to call them on their distortion of certain facts.
  
  
• Acknowledging that the budget blueprint that Republicans voted for in the House probably will not fly with the Senate, Trump is now open to a “continuing resolution.” This would be a bill that just says “keep doing what you’re doing with the current budget for another few months.”
  
  - However, Democrats are saying “no way, stop DOGE first,” even as some hardline Republicans are calling for DOGE’s cuts to be written into the budget (or the continuing resolution), which would make those cuts legal instead of illegal as they are now. Meanwhile, moderate Senate Republicans (there are a few) won’t yet stop DOGE nor legalize it, and also won’t accept cuts to Medicaid and similar programs.
  
  - Given that it seems unlikely that all the warring factions can find common ground, the federal government remains poised to shut down the night of March 14th.
  
  
• A judge has found that OPM (and DOGE inside it) doesn’t have the legal right to fire (or direct the firing of) large numbers of employees. The judge ordered OPM to rescind all its memos calling for mass firings. However, individual federal agencies may follow their own procedures, and Trump appointees control nearly all of them. So it’s unclear whether the “victory” will actually bring anyone back, or save anyone currently on the chopping block.
  
  
• An appeals court refused to intervene in the lower court’s order that blocks Trump from ending birthright citizenship.
  
  
• Earlier this week, a judge ordered that refugee resettlement programs be reinstated. Since then, the State Department has canceled the contracts of the very programs that brought the lawsuit. So they are back in the same court.
  
  
• USAID cuts of funding to just one international organization are threatening the lives of nearly 800,000 malnourished children.
  
  
• Musk quipped at yesterday’s cabinet meeting that DOGE had “briefly” shut off funding for Ebola prevention. That’s false. The Ebola prevention monies through USAID are still cut off.
  
  
• The Democrats themselves, through their three national committees, have finally filed suit against the Trump administration, for hobbling or eliminating the independent groups and inspectors that are meant to oversee the government, particularly the Federal Elections Commission. Without independent oversight, Republicans could stack future elections in their favor, as they have often done with gerrymandering.
  
  
• Hundreds of weather forecasters and climate experts have been fired from NOAA.
  
  
• The Social Security Administration may cut up to 50% of its workforce.
  
  
• The Trump administration has dropped two more significant cases against criminals. Each of those perpetrators has contributed significant funds to things associated with Trump, one $45 million and the other $75 million. Injustice, like American citizenship, is apparently for sale now.
  
  
• Consumer confidence has plummeted in February, to a low last seen during the pandemic.
  
  
• The Department of Education’s Orwellian report-your-neighbors website is available now at https://enddei.ed.gov. “Ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning, free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination… the Department of Education will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation.”
  
  
• Trump is expected to sign an executive order today making English the official language of the United States.
  
  
• Texas has introduced a state bill (HB 3399) that will make it illegal for *adults* to receive transgender care, even if they pay for it themselves. The proposal uses the existing Texas law (codified in 161.702) that bans gender-affirming care for minors and removes the references to “minors” so that it applies to everyone.
  
  

Trump World, day 39 (Thur., 2/27, 2 PM EST):

• Trump signed an executive order yesterday that will require approval from DOGE for nearly every individual item of federal spending, before the money can be spent. It also directs DOGE to revamp the payment systems of the federal government to make it easier for them to fulfill this function. Trump is giving Musk, an unelected unsupervised actor, nearly complete control of how the federal government spends every penny, and therefore control of the government itself.
  
  - Musk lead yesterday’s “presidential” cabinet meeting, speaking more than anyone else and standing while Trump sat. When Trump asked if anyone present had a problem with Musk, no one answered. Trump stated yesterday that he expects the entire cabinet to follow blindly, “no exceptions.”
  
  - The same executive order giving DOGE nearly unlimited power also freezes government employees’ payment cards for 30 days, so they can spend nothing, other than for disaster relief and a few other exceptions.
  
  
• Given the ongoing power dynamics, Musk is presently the de facto king of the United States.
  
  
• The FAA appears to be poised to stop using Verizon for its communications (a $2.4 billion contract), to switch to Musk’s StarLink.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the courts are attempting to fight back. However, the Supreme Court has temporarily paused the lower court’s order that had demanded the government unfreeze USAID funding by midnight last night.
  
  - It’s unclear which way that case will go, but Chief Justice Roberts (acting alone, correctly, because of the short timeframe) wanted to prevent the lower court from finding the Trump administration in contempt, until the Supreme Court has considered the situation. They could let the lower court’s order stand, vacate it, or take up the case themselves. What they do next and what they say could have vast implications whether the ongoing Musk coup succeeds.
  
  - Mindful of the urgency, Roberts gave the parties to the lawsuit only until noon today to file any additional comments beyond what’s already in the proceedings of the lower court.
  
  - If not stopped, the Trump administration plans to cut $54 billion (94%) from USAID. This will help fund his tax cuts, which mostly benefit corporations and the wealthy.
  
  
• In addition to the courts resisting DOGE, a group of Republican senators had a closed door meeting with the White House chief of staff yesterday, expressing their concerns about Musk. Anonymous sources reported forceful comments from at least three senators, including Moran (Kansas) and especially Collins (Maine), who has complained about Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”
  
  
• Republicans in the Senate are also taking issue with the budget framework approved by the House of Representatives. Some refuse to vote for things like Medicaid cuts. Others, however, want the budget to be even *more* costly to Americans, by making Trump’s tax cuts permanent. (The House framework has them as temporary.)
  
  - The federal government is scheduled to shut down in 16 days if the budget hasn’t been completely hashed out by then.
  
  
• After some confusion yesterday, Trump reiterated this morning that, next Tuesday, the 25% tariffs will go into effect on Canada and Mexico, along with raising China to 20%.
  
  
• Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) is proposing a new law for the U.S. to begin printing $250 bills with Trump’s face on them.
  
  
• The Pentagon has announced that all transgender service members are to be “separated” from the military by June 25th, unless they receive an exemption. Exact numbers are disputed or unknown, but estimates of the affected are between 4,000 and 14,000 transgender U.S. troops, some of whom are already suing to be allowed to continue to serve.
  
  - Transgender troops will be honorably discharged, assuming no problems with their service records. The Pentagon acknowledges that they haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just who they are that’s unacceptable.
  
  
• RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), brushed off the ongoing measles outbreak that began in Texas as “not unusual.” While it is very far from a pandemic, his statement is false. More people are already sick with measles in this one outbreak than *all* cases across the entire United States in 2022, and known infected are not locked down. Said a doctor in Texas, “We’re still in free-fall.”
  
  
• The FDA (part of HHS) has canceled its meeting in March, that was supposed to determine which flu strains to include in next year’s flu shot. RFK Jr. has been vehemently anti-vaccine.
  
  
• In one of the few (possibly) positive things coming from the executive branch, the Secretary of Agriculture announced a five-point plan to fight avian flu and reduce the cost of eggs. Whether the plan can succeed with a gutted federal government remains to be seen.
  
  
• The Secretary of Veterans Affairs had been crowing about cutting 875 contracts worth $2 billion — until it was revealed that the cuts were going to hurt veterans across the nation in a variety of ways. The VA quietly rescinded the guidance and now says the contract review “is ongoing.”
  
  
• The IRS has laid off 7,000 people so far, and plans to close 120 offices nationwide. We still have to file our returns as usual, but expect much longer waits if you have questions or concerns. The cuts are expected to reduce the IRS’s ability to pursue high wealth tax dodgers.
  
  
• With no explanation, the federal government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is dropping its lawsuit against Capital One, for cheating customers out of $2 billion. Earlier in the week, CFPB also dropped a case against loan servicers illegally pursuing student loan debtors after they went bankrupt. DOGE had attempted to simply gut CFPB to reduce corporate accountability, but a judge blocked that approach.
  
  
• The U.S. Attorney General is ordering that charges be dropped nationwide in all lawsuits based on racial or sexual discrimination in hiring at police and fire departments.
  
  
• Paramount is rolling back its DEI initiatives. Paramount has taken some extra heat from conservatives because Star Trek has “become too woke.”
  
  
• The Department of Education has announced an “End DEI” website, to encourage people to report any DEI-related issues in grades K-12. Want to punish a trans kid for playing sports? Call out a child for celebrating their African heritage? Maybe burn some books? The Trump administration is on your side.
  
  
• A woman in Colorado is being charged with planting explosives at a Tesla dealership.
  
  
• Remember that tomorrow (Friday) is the first scheduled economic blackout. It will not have much long term effect, but may send a significant message if it’s successful. If possible, do not buy anything tomorrow from major corporations, particularly those who have rolled back DEI initiatives, like Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.
  
  

Trump World, day 38 (Wed., 2/26, 3 PM EST):

• The House of Representatives passed a budget framework yesterday that eyes over $880 billion in cuts from Medicare and Medicaid and over $230 million in cuts to SNAP, as well as slashing a variety of other programs that help the less fortunate, including school lunches and heating assistance. The framework uses those funds to give more than a trillion dollars in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.
  
  - This is NOT a budget. It’s only a framework for the budget, and the Senate would have to approve identical wording. But the willingness of congressional Republicans to agree to deeply cut social safety nets is alarming. If you or anyone you know relies on the social safety net, the time to shout at your representatives is now, before the Senate votes and before the full budget is written. Otherwise, it will be too late.
  
  
• The judge that ordered foreign aid funding restored is running out of patience. He has given the Trump administration until midnight to comply. The administration has responded by filing an emergency motion with an appeals court, to block the orders of the lower court. They claim it’s impossible to turn everything back on that quickly.
  
  - Reports are circulating that two DOGE staffers took it upon themselves to shut off more USAID funding than was directed by the Secretary of State.
  
  - Even if USAID recovers, their offices are being repurposed. Staffers in D.C. are being allowed 15 minutes each, under guard, to visit their old offices this week to remove their personal belongings.
  
  
• A different judge has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the refugee resettlement programs normally active in the U.S. Trump’s actions so far have left 600,000 refugees in limbo, all over the world. This lawsuit is on top of a similar one brought last week by Catholic Bishops; that case has its next hearing on Friday.
  
  
• A third judge, who had previously granted a temporary order, has *permanently* ordered that *all* congressionally-approved federal funding (including grants and loans) be unfrozen, and remain unfrozen, no matter what name or guise the administration tries to put on it.
  
  
• Trump wants to vastly downsize the entire federal government, by permanently eliminating positions and not just leaving them vacant. For example, he has directed the EPA to cut 65% of its staff — the jobs, not just the people.
  
  - OPM sent out a memo today asking all federal agencies to submit plans for massive downsizing by March 13th. “Agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions… Collaborate with [your] Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) team leads within the agency… [and consider cutting] positions not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations… [Also weigh] whether the agency [itself] or any of its subcomponents should be eliminated or consolidated.”
  
  - OPM also instructed agency heads to make plans to remove thousands of the most senior career officials across the government, so Trump can replace them all with his political appointees.
  
  - Workers in at least two agencies — Veterans Affairs and the Department of the Interior — are reporting today that their employee purchase cards have had their spending limits set to $1. This effectively blocks those employees from traveling or making any purchases necessary for their jobs. No one has taken ownership for resetting the cards.
  
  - Said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia): “Federal employees do not deserve their jobs. Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks.”
  
  
• Trump is planning to issue “gold cards” for rich immigrants to use as a path to citizenship, instead of green cards. They will cost $5 million.
  
  
• Zelenskyy is expected to visit the U.S. later this week, to sign some sort of minerals deal. The details are unknown.
  
  - Trump today, about *not* ending the Ukraine war: “You know it's possible it doesn't work out. There is a possibility, but I hope it does.”
  
  
• Trump is threatening to sue anyone who publishes news from anonymous sources.
  
  
• The Supreme Court appears to be leaning toward granting relief to a woman who claims she was discriminated against at work, because she was straight. While on the surface this may sound improbable, the details of this specific case may truly favor the woman. She may be right.
  
  
• The new head of the EPA is considering “reversing” the finding that greenhouse gasses are dangerous to the public. Without that finding, regulations that lean on it could all be abandoned, removing emissions limits and further endangering the planet.
  
  
• There are now over 130 known cases of measles in the Texas outbreak. One unvaccinated child has died, marking the first measles death in the U.S. in ten years.
  
  - Anti-vaxxers were quick to blame the measles shots, for giving other people measles that they then gave to the unvaccinated. They also questioned why the CDC isn’t investigating these cases for differences from “naturally occurring” measles, and labeled the whole thing a psy op against RFK Jr. (Actually, Texas already did genotype testing, and it is a known, naturally-occurring strain.)
  
  
• NBC News reports nine U.S. states are attempting to overturn or restrict gay marriage. This is an extreme long shot, since it is protected by both congressional law and Supreme Court precedent, but in Trump World one might be able to realize one’s most bigoted and twisted fantasies.
  
  
• Such as: Trump posted an AI video clip of Gaza replaced with beach hotels, dancing women, and shops selling gold. Though perhaps aimed at people in the Middle East, the song lyrics are in English and include “Donald’s coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see.” The video closes with Trump and Israel’s prime minister reclining poolside and sipping brightly colored drinks. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/114068387897265338
  
  
• There is a “glitch” in voice dictation on some iPhones, in which you say “racist” and the dictation briefly types “Trump.” Apple is working on a fix.
  

Trump World, day 37 (Tue., 2/25, noon EST):

• Yesterday, on the third anniversary of the war’s beginning, the leaders of 37 nations gathered in Kyiv and virtually to express their continuing support of Ukraine. The U.S. was not among them.
  
  
• The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — pardoned by Trump for their major roles in the January 6th riot — have announced plans to sue the Department of Justice for wrongful prosecution.
  
  
• The House of Representatives is expected to vote later today on a budget proposal that would cut $2 trillion in federal spending (mostly from popular programs like Medicaid and SNAP), while giving $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy. It’s not clear that Republicans can muster enough votes for this, even among their own people, but it’s what Trump wants.
  
  
• The Veterans Administration has fired another 1,400 people.
  
  
• The FDA is trying to rehire staff that were fired, including workers who oversee safety of food and medical devices.
  
  
• Bowing to pressure from all sides, OPM said that replying to Musk’s “five bullets” email is voluntary, but did not guarantee safety to those who did not reply, saying “Agencies should review responses and evaluate non-responses… Agencies should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity/accomplishment requests.”
  
  - Musk later posted that federal employees will be “given another chance” to reply, and insisted that failure to respond a second time will result in termination.
  
  
• More than 20 career civil servants (technical staff highly skilled in the government’s computer systems) who got sucked into DOGE have quit en masse, writing that they refuse to “dismantle critical public services… We swore an oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations. However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
  
  
• This past weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders went barnstorming in midwestern red states, like Iowa and Nebraska, speaking to crowds of thousands (and 100,000+ online) about the perils of the Trump administration.
  
  
• Apple’s shareholders have voted not to roll back its DEI initiatives.
  
  
• On Saturday, at the Governors’ Ball at the White House, the U.S. Army Chorus performed a version of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables. This is a people’s song of protest against a tyrannical government, and a laughably ironic choice given the current political climate. It’s not clear who chose the song for that venue, but the Internet was quick to comment that MAGA was probably so uninformed or self-absorbed that they didn’t understand the lyrics in context.
  

This quote comes from political commentator Jay Kuo, who points out that the American Resistance can draw inspiration from others:

Trump World, day 36 (Mon., 2/24, 3 PM EST):

Some days, Trump news gets slow. This isn’t one of those days.

• Today, the U.S. sided with a handful of authoritarian regimes around the world, by refusing to sign a UN declaration of Russia as the aggressor in the Ukraine war.
  
  - Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) posted “This is all embarrassing. We are better than this. Moral clarity: Russia invaded its neighbor because it wanted its territory and couldn’t stand the thought of an Ukraine run by a democracy."
  
  - Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said “Blame for this human catastrophe rests solely on Vladimir Putin. Here’s how we know: If Russian forces laid down their arms, Europe would be at peace. If Ukrainian forces laid down theirs, Putin’s aims would not stop with Kyiv. Mistaking this fact is as embarrassing as it is costly.”
  
  
• Trump refused today to call Putin a dictator, after calling Zelenskyy one.
  
  
• The Supreme Court has declined to revisit a 25-year-old precedent that allows laws creating safe “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. The laws stand.
  
  
• The USDA is being sued for removing climate change pages and data from its website.
  
  
• 2,000 USAID workers have been officially fired.
  
  
• Florida is creating its own DOGE.
  
  
• Trump stated today that he intends to go ahead with the tariffs on Canada and Mexico at the end of the 30-day pause.
  
  
• 200,000 people in Canada have signed a petition to revoke Musk’s Canadian citizenship.
  
  
• Holding up his end of the quid pro quo, the mayor of New York City announced today that he will be closing the Asylum Seeker Arrival Center at the Roosevelt Hotel, which has processed 173,000 migrant registrations since 2023.
  
  
• ICE is backing off from its plan to house migrants in tents in Guantanamo Bay, after concerns arose about inadequate basic facilities.
  
  - However, they have been instructed to vigorously pursue thousands of immigrant children who have entered the U.S. alone. This comes after Trump shut down the office providing legal representation to such children.
  
  
• A judge has blocked ICE from entering religious buildings to hunt for immigrants, but limited the order to only the specific places of worship that brought the lawsuit.
  
  
• National Parks and Monuments are scaling back their offerings and services across the country, after at least 1,000 workers were fired. Yosemite staff hung a huge upside-down American flag from El Capitan.
  
  
• Democrats in the House are floating a longshot bill called the Bad DOGE Act, which would limit and investigate the wildly unrestrained behavior currently emanating from Musk and his minions.
  
  
• A judge has blocked the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management from disclosing personal information to DOGE.
  
  
• Federal workers’ unions are suing to block Musk from demanding that everyone explain what they did last week, lest they be fired. The email was sent even to people in the judicial branch of the federal government.
  
  - Senator Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) summed things up as “This is the ultimate d‑‑‑ boss move from Musk – except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a d‑‑‑.”
  
  - Several of the heads of departments who Trump just appointed told their departments not to comply.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Trump called Musk’s email “genius” and responded to criticism by posting a SpongeBob meme mocking federal workers.
  
  
• An AI-generated video of Trump kissing Musk’s feet and showing the words “Long live the real king” was playing on a bunch of screens in the offices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development today. Hackers were blamed.
  
  
• Several political pundits on both ends of the political spectrum are predicting some form of collapse of the Trump administration by the end of March.
  
  
• In the past several days, four major polls have found that Trump’s approval rating is at a historic low for this point in a new presidential term, but a Harvard poll today reports that his approval still stands at 52%. It’s not clear what Harvard’s poll did differently.
  

Photos: a question from a transgender man; the flag at El Capitan; Trump’s SpongeBob meme

Trump World, day 35 (Sun., 2/23, noon EST):

• Yesterday, Musk’s people sent out an email to hundreds of thousands of federal workers, asking them to respond with five bullets describing what they accomplished in the past week. Musk said that a failure to reply by midnight Monday night would be considered a resignation.
  
  
• With regard to the previous bullet, it would be awful if millions of other people flooded the mail server supporting their address of hr@opm.gov. Definitely don’t write to them if you’re not a federal employee. It could really gum up the works.
  
  
• A new law goes into effect on Tuesday in Ohio, that all colleges must prevent transgender students from using their correct restrooms or changing rooms. This law is more restrictive than any other red state’s, which only target transgender students in public schools.
  
  
• At least one federal scholarship that is specifically targeted to students at historically Black universities has been suspended.
  
  
• Hunter Schafer, whose photo is below, is a transgender actress (known for her role in Euphoria). Her passport was stolen, so she applied for a replacement. The new one says her gender is male. “It doesn't change anything about me or my transness, but it does make life a little harder.”
  
  

Trump World, day 34 (Sat., 2/22, 2 PM EST):

• A judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from changing or canceling contracts it considers DEI-related.
  
  
• Coca-Cola are standing firm on their DEI initiatives, but Pepsi are rolling theirs back.
  
  
• The Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation against Maine, in response to Maine defying Trump’s order to keep transgender girls out of girls’ sports.
  
  
• The Department of Defense will be cutting 5,400 civilian workers.
  
  
• Trump yesterday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top ranked military officer.
  
  
• The Trump-appointed judge who had ordered that USAID workers be reinstated has rescinded the order. The administration “persuaded” her that it won’t cause significant harm to USAID workers to place them on “administrative leave.”
  
  
• The U.S. Marshals Service has deputized Musk’s private security team.
  
  
• This may be fake news: Reports are circulating, even on MSN, that claim Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 under the code name Krasnov. Even if that is true, it might not mean anything 38 years later, but it’s an interesting development.
  
  
• This should be fake news, but isn’t: There is a bill afloat in Congress to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.
  
  

Trump World, day 33 (Fri., 2/21, 2 PM EST):

• The Republican wall around Trump is starting to break. In the past few days, several Republicans in congress have come out swinging against specific Trump positions and actions. Newsmax and Fox News are supporting the Associated Press in AP’s right to keep using “Gulf of Mexico” without being punished. The cover of today’s right-leaning New York Post reads “PRESIDENT TRUMP: THIS IS A DICTATOR” with a photo of Putin. It appears that even Republicans can, after all, be pushed too far by their despot.
  
  
• Lawyers inside the Pentagon paused the expected firing of 50,000 civilian workers, under concerns that it might be illegal.
  
  
• Trump appears to be poised to attempt to place the U.S. Postal Service fully under his administration’s control, though doing so is probably illegal. Trump also appears to be planning to allow Musk into Fort Knox.
  
  
• The clock ran out for the Trump administration to unfreeze all congressionally-approved foreign aid money. The judge in that case reprimanded the administration and again demanded that they comply with the court order — and warned them to stop attempting to dodge it — but stopped short (for now) of holding the administration in contempt.
  
  
• A coalition is suing to reverse Trump’s anti-DEI efforts (which literally go so far as to punish you for using certain words) as unconstitutional limitations on free speech and due process.
  
  
• There was a heated exchange today between Maine’s governor and Trump. Maine refuses to tell transgender athletes that they cannot participate in sports, and state leaders are vowing to fight against Trump pulling federal funding for public education. Here’s a link.
  

—

In an executive order issued on Tuesday, Trump assumed control and direct oversight of nearly all independent agencies of the federal government, including the Federal Election Commission.

“Officials who wield vast… power must be supervised and controlled by the… President… The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties. No employee… acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations.”

It goes on to state that the administration shall review *all* new regulations of all departments, to ensure that they align with Trump’s agenda.

Even for Trump, this is a surprising attempt at overreach. If he has *full* control of every group — from the EPA to the Treasury, from Justice to the military, along with all the previously independent inspectors and gatekeepers — he is the de facto king, with his own enforcers from top to bottom, including control of most of the processes of conducting federal elections. He can ignore (“interpret”) every federal law, and Justice cannot do anything about it.

This should not stand up in court, since it clearly violates the Constitution and a huge number of laws Congress has passed. However, that he would even attempt something so brazen is directly tied to his referring to himself this week as “The King.” This is a foundational document to overthrow the entire structure of our republic.

This final straw — combined with Trump ripping funding from red states, firing people who voted for him, causing humanitarian crises on a global scale, facilitating the most spectacular personal data breach in history, attacking our allies, and shacking up with Putin — is probably why even Republicans are finally waking up and pushing back. Lisa Murkowski, Republican Senator from Alaska, said this week…

About Ukraine: “It is wrong to suggest that somehow or other Ukraine started this war, asked for this war. It is clear for all the world to see and to know that Putin invaded Ukraine and started the war.”

About the funding freezes: “If the president, for instance, should seek to withhold federal funding that has already been authorized and appropriated, that violates the Budget Act, it violates the Impoundment Act and it cannot be allowed to stand. And so, if we in Congress allow that, we effectively cede some of our authority, and so, your question as to, what do we do about it? We have to stand up…”

About all of it: “Now, the 'we' has to be more than just me. And this is where it becomes more of a challenge, but it requires speaking out. It requires saying, 'That violates the law. That violates the authorities of the executive’…

“Speaking out and standing up… requires, again, more than just one or two Republicans — it requires us as a Congress to do so.”

Trump World, day 32 (Thur., 2/20, 4 PM EST):

Well, we made it through the first month. 47 more to go…

• 100 people have been fired from the federal agency that works to prevent overdoses and suicides. 6,700 are being fired from the IRS.
  
  
• Scientists at the FDA have been told not to use the words women, disabled, or elderly in public communications.
  
  
• Continuing the string of aviation fatalities, two small planes collided in mid-air over Arizona yesterday. Both pilots were killed. “Of course” it’s safe to fly, said the Secretary of Transportation.
  
  
• Republicans in Congress have introduced a bill that would remove the $5 cap from bank account overdraft fees, allowing those fees to return to $35. This will only hurt consumers.
  
  
• The Kennedy Center was evacuated today following a bomb threat.
  
  
• Remember MapQuest? Google Maps before Google Maps? They have a page up now where you can rename the Gulf of Mexico anything you want, and it’ll be right there on the map for you. https://gulfof.mapquest.com
  
  
• Yesterday, Trump referred to himself as “THE KING!” Several prominent Republicans followed suit in various posts. Maybe they were all joking.
  
  

Trump World, day 31 (Wed., 2/19, 1:30 PM EST):

• Trump to Ukraine, about the war, yesterday: “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
  
  
• When Zelenskyy pointed out that Trump appears to be in a Russian “disinformation bubble,” Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator.” Mike Pence, Trump’s former VP, then chimed in, “Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth.”
  
  
• Trump yesterday, prerecorded on Fox News, said: “Inflation is back… and I had nothing to do with that.” Inflation went up, very predictably, in the month since Trump started his tariffs and other nonsense.
  
  
• Trump is planning additional 25% tariffs on automobiles, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals from all other countries. Again, this move is to push more money to large American businesses, by making consumers pay more for every other country’s goods. It has nothing to do with decreasing inflation or lowering retail prices.
  
  
• The Trump administration will no longer fund the non-profit organization that provides legal representation for immigrant children who enter the United States alone. Now those children have to represent themselves in court.
  
  
• The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is suing the Trump administration over its sudden suspension of funding for refugee resettlement into the United States.
  
  
• Musk is claiming he found millions of dead people receiving social security. This is false. There are six million dead people known to be in the Social Security system, but they are not receiving payments. It would cost millions of dollars to scrub them all out, so a decision was made to leave them present but inactive.
  
  
• Musk is claiming that many 150-year-old people are receiving payments. This is false. Social Security’s system is written in the old programming language COBOL. When someone’s exact birth year isn’t known and is left blank, the system defaults to a year 150 years ago. No one believes nor intends that those people are 150.
  
  
• DOGE claims to have found $16 billion in waste and fraud, and provided a list. This is false. A quick check by reporters found that half of it was a single project worth $8 million, not $8 billion.
  
  
• As expected, the lawsuit brought by the states to stop DOGE has failed, because the states lack legal standing (the states aren’t being directly harmed). The related suit about mass firings that was brought by workers’ unions is still proceeding.
  
  
• DOGE has fired various people from the USDA who were overseeing the response to bird flu. It fired another bunch of people who oversee the power grid for the Pacific Northwest. It’s trying to bring those two groups back.
  
  
• A coalition is suing to keep DOGE out of the IRS taxpayer data.
  
  
• DOGE is in the Pentagon.
  
  
• Montana is considering a bill that would make administering messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines illegal. This includes the COVID vaccines that are currently approved for use in the United States.
  
  
• Trump put himself in charge of The Kennedy Center the other week. Many performers have since backed out of appearing there, but Trump has cut the Gay Men’s Chorus and the National Symphony Orchestra.
  
  
• Trump announced that he’s firing *all* U.S. attorneys hired during the Biden era. “America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System - THAT BEGINS TODAY!"
  
  
• A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that a majority of Americans finally disapprove of Trump’s second term, 51-44.
  

—

In the case brought by transgender troops who want to continue to serve, the judge appears poised to rule for the troops. In barely restrained rhetoric, she blasted the Trump administration’s lawyers:

In describing Trump’s executive order, she said it’s “arguably rampant with animus.” She quoted parts of the order and asked the administration’s attorney if he considered those descriptions of transgender people to be demeaning. He wouldn’t directly answer.

She also asked how someone’s pronouns would impact anyone’s military readiness, then cut off the reply with, “It doesn’t! [Any] common sense rational human being understands that it doesn’t. [It’s] frankly ridiculous.”

Etc.

The case will reconvene on March 3rd, after additional transgender-related directives are expected to have been issued by the Department of Defense.

Trump World, day 30 (Tue., 2/18, 3 PM):

• Now that DOGE has laid off a few hundred more FAA workers, there was another plane crash yesterday. A Delta jet flying from Minnesota with 80 people onboard lost a wing, caught fire, and flipped upside-down while landing in Toronto. Miraculously, no one was killed.
  
  
• DOGE is trying to get directly into the taxpayer data at the IRS, but reportedly has not succeeded so far.
  
  
• 10% of the workers at NASA have been fired.
  
  
• A group of workers’ unions are suing to stop the mass firings. They seem to have better standing to pursue this action than the states’ attorneys general, who are still suing in a separate case.
  
  
• The situation with the corrupt mayor of New York City continues to evolve. After some of his own people quit rather than continue to support him, the judge overseeing his case has called in prosecutors to explain why exactly they want to drop the charges (is it the quid pro quo deal with the Trump administration?). Meanwhile, the governor of New York State has the power to depose the mayor and is considering doing so.
  
  
• Russian news media is gloating that Trump is giving them what they want and pulling the U.S. back from our involvement in global resistance to the Ukraine war. Trump is, instead, pledging diplomatic cooperation with Russia, and talks are beginning for some joint U.S.-Russia energy projects in the Arctic.
  
  

Trump World, day 29 (Mon., 2/17, 1 PM):

• Despite the recent run of plane crashes, several hundred workers were just fired from the FAA. Despite bird flu mutating rapidly, several hundred workers were just fired from the CDC.
  
  
• There is a virtual hearing today in the case to eject DOGE for not having the constitutional authority to do what it is doing. It’s seeming like the judge may deny the request, for now, because the states’ attorneys general have yet to prove concretely how they will be harmed by the federal firings.
  
  
• Ukraine rejected the proposal for the U.S. to take profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. The U.S. is proceeding with “peace” talks with Russia, but not inviting Ukraine. The U.K. is reportedly considering sending troops into Ukraine themselves, if the U.S. sides with Putin.
  
  
• A lower court has temporarily reinstated the head of the federal agency that protects whistleblowers, saying that he was fired without cause. Trump is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on that case.
  
  

Trump World, day 28 (Sun., 2/16, 2 PM EST):

• The Secretary of State is proposing that the U.S. take half the revenue from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. Trump sees this as fair compensation for what we’ve given Ukraine in the war.
  
  
• Musk is urging Germany to give greater power to its far Right political party.
  
  
• The abrupt shifts in U.S. policy have so alarmed our own allies that European leaders have scheduled an emergency summit for tomorrow to strategize how to deal with our nonsense, particularly with regard to Ukraine.
  
  
• Some federal employees who took the buyout have since received letters that they are fired instead. It’s not clear if the termination letters were sent by mistake.
  
  
• Google Maps got so many bad reviews and complaints about “Gulf of America” that they have shut off those functions for that location and deleted the reviews.
  
  
• “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” — Donald Trump, yesterday, echoing historical dictators in a random post without any context
  
  
• “[That’s] the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.” — Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times, in response
  

—

The official Department of Education website now has a blistering four-page open letter to educators, taking them to task for explaining the history of racism in this country and for trying to combat systemic inequality with affirmative action and “DEI” in scholarships, hiring, enrollment, etc. Here’s a sample:

“DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.

[Subtext: We don’t want White kids to feel bad because their ancestors might have owned Black people and treated them like cattle.]

“The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.” This is the same kind of rhetoric spreading across the federal government. The Trump administration intends to tear down everything that shines a light on existing or historical inequality or that attempts to address ongoing inequities. They want a nation that aggressively favors wealthy “Christian” straight White American males above all other humans, with no distractions from that pure vision.

—

Personal, full disclosure: My dad’s people were fresh off the boat from pre-war Germany, but my mom’s people were here for hundreds of years. They fought on both sides in the Civil War. One of my great-great-greatgrandfathers owned two people; I knew someone who knew him personally. Those two people he owned were property, just property, listed on available records like horses or cows.

That’s Not Okay.

My ancestor and the ancestors who fought against him are not the same. Children should be taught why.

It’s not about White guilt. I didn’t do it. It’s about ensuring that no one ever does something like that again. It’s about understanding the capacity of humans to do evil. It’s about empathy and compassion. It’s about great wrongs unfolding at your moment in history, and having the courage to stand against them.

The Trump administration, of course, *really* does not want anyone to learn about those things. No DEI here, no sir. They want to remake America in their own twisted image.

Shall we let them?

Trump World, day 27 (Sat., 2/15, 3 PM EST):

• A judge has temporarily blocked the mass firing of workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
  
  
• However, the large-scale firings continue across the rest of the federal government. NBC News reports that the NNSA (the agency that monitors nuclear weapons) still hasn’t been able to recover all the workers it decided to un-fire after terminating them on Thursday. The government-wide federal dismissals are often happening almost instantly, shutting off people’s access cards and email with no warning, and locking them from the premises. Consequently, the NNSA apparently doesn’t know how to contact all the people they fired before deciding to bring them back.
  
  
• It is planned that the IRS will lose roughly 1,500 people as early as next week, despite the start of tax season. Please understand: the government still has to do all its work, but now with less staff who also fear for their jobs. The systemwide effect will be like having fewer, more disgruntled people working at Motor Vehicles when you try to renew your license.
  
  
• Hamas has proceeded with today’s hostage release, under the terms of the ceasefire. Trump, however, had unilaterally demanded that Hamas release *all* the hostages today, which they did not. Israel is debating what to do next.
  
  
• There is a vaccine-preventable measles outbreak ongoing in a corner of Texas. The number of known infected there have doubled in less than a week, centered in a county whose schoolchildren have an 18% rate of vaccine exemptions.
  
  
• On Friday, three men in DOGE shirts and MAGA hats showed up at San Francisco City Hall, demanding access to city files. It is not believed they were actually from DOGE, and they had left the building by the time police arrived.
  
  
• Utah’s House of Representatives voted 59-10 for a bill that would *require* basic instructions on firearms safety be taught to schoolchildren, starting in kindergarten. The bill now proceeds to their senate. (Tennessee has a similar law, but it allows education officials to determine which grade to start with.)
  
  
• There are protests all over the country on a daily basis, so I’m not calling them out unless there’s something particularly unusual. Yesterday’s included one that packed the park nearest to the Stonewall National Monument, after the Trump administration had “TQ+” removed from the LGBTQ+ text on the monument’s website. Their visitors’ center (which isn’t run by the federal government) posted a rebuttal that “We’re unwavering in our effort to protect and preserve Stonewall’s legacy and history. Our space is inextricably linked with and honors the brave pioneers, especially transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, who led the Stonewall Rebellion.”
  
  
• Correction: Yesterday, I shared information about the “U.S. Attorney General” being entangled in a corruption case involving the mayor of New York City. It is actually the U.S. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove who is most directly involved. He gloated about it on Fox News.
  
  

Trump World, day 26 (Fri., 2/14, 4 PM EST):

• A judge has issued a temporary order that Trump lift the freezes he has instituted on all foreign aid. This is much bigger than the earlier restraining order meant to sustain USAID. The judge wrote that Trump’s sweeping actions have “set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country… [and it] will continue to have a catastrophic effect on the humanitarian missions of several plaintiffs.” The judge gave the Trump administration five days to prove it is complying with the order.
  
  
• 14 states are suing, claiming that DOGE and Musk do not have constitutional authority to do what they are doing. There is a hearing at 4 PM.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears to be laying off most federal workers who were hired in the past year or two. When the effort is complete, more than 200,000 people may be fired. They are laying off staff at veterans’ hospitals, staff who monitor safety at meat packing plants, staff who watch for and fight wildfires, and on and on. They had laid off much of the group that oversees nuclear weapons, but those people were suddenly called back into the office this afternoon, so their status is uncertain.
  
  
• Trump’s U.S. Deputy Attorney General apparently struck a deal to drop well-supported criminal charges (including accepting bribes from Turkey) against the mayor of New York City, in exchange for the mayor assisting in deportations of immigrants. This quid pro quo arrangement is so odious and the criminal evidence so strong against the mayor that at least seven different prosecutors have quit since yesterday, each one leaving rather than drop the charges as the Deputy Attorney General commanded. The first to resign was a conservative lawyer that Trump himself had just promoted. She said it would set “a breathtaking and dangerous precedent.” As I write this, the charges still stand.
  
  
• Mexico is threatening to sue Google over renaming the entire Gulf of Mexico, because a large portion of it is atop Mexico’s continental shelf, making that portion legally theirs.
  
  
• Emboldened by Trump, at least eight U.S. states are now attempting to prevent state funding from being used for gender-affirming medical or psychiatric care for adults: Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia.
  
  
• Similarly, the surgeon general of Louisiana has announced that his state will no longer promote mass vaccinations. He appears to be talking about standard vaccines like polio, measles, and mumps. The new U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, is against vaccines.
  
  
• On Wednesday evening, Elon Musk retweeted a meme referring to the “parasite class,” meaning anyone who receives federal assistance, like SNAP or Medicaid.
  
  
• The website for the Stonewall National Monument — a very important location in the history of LGBTQ+ civil rights — has had the “TQ+” removed. Now it just says “LGB.”
  
  

Trump World, day 25 (Thur., 2/13, 4 PM):

• Up to this point, there have been about 60 lawsuits filed against the actions of the new Trump administration. As far as I can determine, none of them have been denied on the merits, but a few have been denied because the people or organizations who brought the suit were found by the judge to not have standing (meaning that they couldn’t show that they themselves were being harmed). This does not prevent actual victims from filing a similar suit later.
  
  
• The finding of a lack of standing happened yesterday with the unions who had filed suit against the buyout of federal workers. The temporary restraining order against the buyout has now been lifted. About 75,000 people have chosen to accept the offer, or almost 4% of the federal workforce.
  
  
• Since the court hasn’t ruled on the merits, though, a different group of unions has filed a similar lawsuit again today.
  
  
• The court order to keep USAID operational has been extended at least another week, though it’s unclear if the Trump administration is complying.
  
  
• Trump has directed that there be an ongoing four-person team from DOGE in every department of the federal government.
  
  
• Trump has signed a plan to charge reciprocal tariffs on every country that has tariffs on goods from the U.S. While this is genuinely fair from a governmental viewpoint, it will drive prices higher overall in the United States.
  
  
• Republicans in the House are discussing cutting money (reportedly $150 billion) from SNAP (that’s food aid for poor Americans, which used to be called food stamps). They are looking at reducing things like SNAP and Medicaid ($800 billion), because they’re trying to find a total of $2 trillion in budget cuts.
  
  
• In a similar vein, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency is looking to rescind $20 billion of grants, that support tens of thousands of projects to fight climate change or protect the environment.
  
  
• Republicans in the Senate have approved RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. As I’ve mentioned previously and as is publicly known, he is a deceitful, dangerous vaccine denier who used to enjoy running small animals through a blender. Sen. Patty Murray, who has been in the Senate for 32 years, said her talk with Kennedy was the single most disturbing meeting she’s ever had with a Cabinet nominee.
  
  
• The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development has reiterated that transgender people should be denied shelter or housing with their current gender. One of HUD’s official web pages (at hud.gov) now reads that they are “recognizing there are only two sexes: male and female. [We’re] getting government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in His own image.”
  
  
• A judge has temporarily blocked the federal government from withholding payment to medical facilities that provide gender-affirming care. The Hill reports that, in the court order, “various federal agencies are temporarily prohibited from withholding or conditioning funding based on a health care facility providing gender-affirming care anywhere in the country.” The suit was brought by transgender teens, among others, so it covers them as well.
  
  
• Given the openly hostile environment to transgender people in some quarters right now, Worcester, Massachusetts has voted itself a “transgender sanctuary city.” A petition was filed with the town asking “the city to not cooperate with federal and state policies aimed at harming transgender and gender diverse people, and to ensure that the LGBTQ community here has access to health care, housing, education and employment without fear of discrimination.” The city council approved the petition, 9-2.
  
  
• Calls are growing on social media for a series of economic blackouts, starting with one on February 28th. The original idea seems to have been to spend no money that day with companies that have rolled back DEI initiatives, like Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon, and McDonalds, but the word is spreading through memes that lack those details. So it has evolved into a day to spend no money at any large corporation, just small local businesses.
  
  
• It turns out that the new namesake of Fort Bragg (which I wrote about yesterday) is from Maine. He was never promoted from Private because, he said, he never wanted to give an order that would end someone else’s life. I doubt the Secretary of Defense was aware of that when he appropriated the man’s name. Here’s a bio: Roland Bragg.
  
  

Trump World, day 24 (Wed., 2/12, 5 PM EST):

• The king of Jordan has agreed to accept 2,000 sick children from Gaza, but refuses to agree to the kind of widespread Palestinian resettlement plan Trump is proposing. Egypt likewise refuses to accept large additional numbers of Palestinian refugees, and their leadership have canceled a planned trip to the U.S.
  
  
• While trying to cut billions of dollars from life-saving aid and research, Trump is asking Congress for $175 billion to complete the border wall.
  
  
• In an effort to save money for things like walls, Congress is strongly considering adding work requirements to Medicaid, but details are still lacking. Medicaid currently covers people such as those who are disabled or whose incomes are very low.
  
  
• DOGE claims to have found billions of dollars in abuse and fraud, but has yet to present any actual evidence to support that. They are now in the Department of Labor.
  
  
• An appeals court refused to overturn the court order demanding that the federal government un-freeze the funding that Congress already approved.
  
  
• Trump has signed an executive order that the government will (in general) only hire one replacement for every four workers who leave.
  
  
• The Secretary of Defense is saying that NATO should not be involved in the future defense of Ukraine. Our NATO allies disagree.
  
  
• The Secretary of the Treasury is in Ukraine, looking for written assurances that we will get access to their minerals, oil, and gas, in exchange for our continued help in the war.
  
  
• On Monday, the inspector general overseeing USAID observed that it was now nearly impossible to account for $8.2 billion that had been allocated to foreign aid. On Tuesday, that inspector general was fired.
  
  
• Now that the economy is under Trump’s watch, prices and inflation rates rose somewhat more quickly in January than economists had expected. This likely means that interest rates will remain unchanged in the short term.
  
  
• The average price for a dozen eggs hit a new high in January ($4.95) and is expected to keep climbing.
  
  
• A U.S. Navy jet crashed into the ocean off of San Diego today. Both crew members ejected safely, and were picked up by a fishing boat.
  
  
• The Department of Education is asking the NCAA to strip all titles, records, and awards from all transgender girls and women who ever participated in female sports in high school or college.
  
  
• California and Minnesota aren’t backing down, but are standing by state laws that allow transgender girls and women to participate in female sports.
  
  
• Google has removed Black History Month and Pride Month from its calendar app.
  
  
• The style guide for the Associated Press (which is used by thousands of journalists) says that they will continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as such, to avoid confusion over the 400-year-old name of an international body of water. Trump has a problem with this, and has barred Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office until they change their policy.
  
  
• 50501 had a substantial number of successful protests the other week, but a bunch were canceled or scaled back when concerns arose that these particular protests were being seeded by people not acting in good faith. Though there is still no transparency who is calling the shots nationwide — and a substantial amount of vitriol gets directed at people who point that out — 50501 have scheduled another set of protests for next Monday. While we all hope for the best, please exercise caution if you participate, and be vigilant if you are in any of the state capitols that day.
  
• In a satirical rebuttal to Trump wanting to buy Denmark, there is a petition circulating now for Denmark to buy California. It has 230,000 signatures. Here’s the link: https://denmarkification.com
  
  
• Trump has a statue of a gold-trimmed money goat on display in Mar-a-Lago. While it’s actually intended for a charity auction in a couple of weeks, it’s still a strange thing. Here are real photos and some info…
  
  

Trump World, day 23 (Tue., 2/11, 2:30 PM EST):

• USAID has been stripped of its lease on the space that formerly housed its headquarters. A union representing the workers is suing again, stating that the government has not complied with the court order to reinstate USAID staff.
  
  
• A judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the NIH from making the cuts I described yesterday.
  
  
• The judge that had briefly frozen the buyout plan for federal employees has extended the freeze “until I respond to the issues presented.”
  
  
• A judge ordered that the government restore access to a variety of health-related web pages and data sets that were taken down to comply with Trump’s anti-“gender ideology” directives. Missing resources include information about HIV, reproductive health care, and “sex differences in the clinical evaluation of medical products.”
  
  
• DOGE is in the Department of Housing and Urban Development
  .
  
• Hamas is postponing the next hostage release (scheduled for Saturday), until Israel better complies with its side of the ceasefire agreement. If Hamas doesn’t give back the hostages on time, Israel says they will resume “intense fighting.” Trump isn’t trying to defuse the situation, but is siding with Israel and similarly threatening Hamas with rhetoric like “Hell is going to break out” and “We will have Gaza. We’re going to take it.”
  
  
• Trump is issuing a directive to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prevents American companies from bribing officials in other countries.
  
  
• In a letter to American bishops, the Pope has strongly rebuked Trump’s recent treatment of immigrants, and schooled JD Vance on the correct interpretation of “ordo amoris.” Here’s an article with details: https://apnews.com/.../pope-trump-migration...
  
  
• More than two dozen Christian and Jewish religious groups are suing to block ICE from seeking immigrants in places of worship.
  
  
• Texas (at the state level) is considering a bill that would *require* the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools. The bill would also allow public schools to dedicate part of the school day for reading The Bible.
  
  
• Trump is directing that rules requiring energy-saving lightbulbs and water-saving showerheads and appliances all be undone.
  
  
• Given the rule that military bases cannot be named after Confederate leaders anymore, the new Secretary of Defense is attempting to circumvent it by finding a service member with the same last name, and naming the base (on paper) after them. Thus, Fort Liberty in North Carolina has been changed back to Fort Bragg, but now it’s technically Fort Private Roland L. Bragg (a random paratrooper) instead of Fort Braxton Bragg (a Confederate general).
  
  
• The Defense Secretary has also sent out a memo that service members with “a history of gender dysphoria” may no longer be promoted. (They are not yet being expelled.)
  
  
• Yesterday, I shared a separate post detailing some of the unexpected impacts to our nation’s farmers from Trump’s recent actions. In particular, though, I should call out manufacturers of farm equipment, which have now gotten slammed twice, once by the retaliatory tariffs China placed on their side and a second time by Trump placing tariffs on imports of basic metals. All of this will hurt companies like Deere, and drive up prices of farm equipment and farm-grown food.
  
  
• Apparently, Trump was able to fire most of the board of directors of the Kennedy Center, and install his own. So, after having his own people appoint him chairman, he then appointed an executive director who “shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture, and will be overseeing the daily operations of the Center… NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST.”
  
  
• Rep. Buddy Carter (Georgia) introduced a new bill this week to rename Greenland to “Red, White, and Blueland” (he’s not joking). The bill would authorize Trump to enter negotiations to acquire Greenland from Denmark.
  

—

We need to keep an eye on H.R. 22 (the SAVE Act) which was reintroduced to the House of Representatives on January 3rd by 78 Republicans. As with so many MAGA Republican things, it seems benign on the surface, but it’s poison.

This bill would require you to present IN PERSON a certified birth certificate, a military service record, a passport, or an enhanced driver’s license (only available in five states) with your *current* name, to be able to register to vote.

Register entirely by mail or online? Nope.

Ever got married and changed your name? Well, did you also change the name on your birth certificate? If not, you can register under your birth name, but when it comes times to vote your driver’s license won’t match the registration. Or, if you registered under your married name, you could be expunged from the voter rolls, because that name isn’t on your birth certificate.

Transgender and your birth state won’t change your birth certificate gender to match your driver’s license? Better get a passport… Ha ha, just kidding, that won’t match your driver’s license gender either. Too bad. You’ll have to out yourself while registering, and hope for the best.

It is estimated that 20 million Americans (mostly married women and poorer people) would be made unable to vote by this act, until they could update their paperwork (which usually isn’t free or fast), if they can at all. Even then, you’d probably need time off from work to register to vote, as well as to actually vote.

This bill is currently in committee.

Trump World, day 22 (Mon., 2/10, 1:30 PM EST):

• Trump has reiterated yet again that, despite the attempted spin by others in the administration, Gazans will *not* have a right to return to Gaza after the U.S. takes ownership of it.
  
  
• Trump is expected to sign a directive today placing 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum coming into the United States from all other countries, including Canada and Mexico.
  
  
• Trump has directed the Treasury Department to stop minting any more pennies, because they cost more than two cents each to produce.
  
  
• Despite last week’s court order reinstating USAID workers, security is still blocking them from entering their headquarters in Washington, D.C. today.
  
  
• A lawsuit has been filed against the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and a second against DOGE’s access to sensitive records held by CFPB (including records related to Musk’s own companies).
  
  
• A judge — the one who had previously ordered that all federal funds be unfrozen — stated today that the federal government has not fully complied, and again ordered that all funds be unfrozen.
  
  
• A temporary court order was issued to protect three Venezuelan immigrants from being deported to Guantanamo Bay, because they might not receive due process or legal counsel there.
  
  
• On Friday, the National Institutes of Health announced that they would be cutting back on grant money going to “indirect costs” (such as the costs of maintaining the space the research occurs in, like laboratories). While this may sound benign, you cannot conduct most research without some kind of space. So this really just equates to reducing all grants by about 10%. A lawsuit was filed today to prevent the change.
  
  
• Senate Democrats have launched a whistleblower site, which people can use to report improper activity occurring anywhere in the federal government. However, there is no guarantee of anonymity, and Trump just fired the head of the agency that protects whistleblowers, so be cautious. https://www.democrats.senate.gov/whistleblowers
  
  
• From the text of a proclamation at WhiteHouse.gov: “I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America… do hereby proclaim February 9, 2025, as Gulf of America Day. I call upon public officials and all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”
  
  
• Reports say that the U.S. Senate’s phone center has been receiving 40 *times* the usual volume of calls. However, a CBS News/YouGov poll taken last Wednesday through Friday found, of nearly 2,200 Americans surveyed, 53% approve of what Trump has done so far, overall. Taken together, this suggests that there really hasn’t been any major change of heart about Trump among the overall electorate yet (or they won’t admit it), but people who have been paying attention all along are now galvanized to action.
  
  

Trump World, day 21 (Sun., 2/9, 1 PM EST):

Today is the slowest day in Trump-related news since he was inaugurated, probably because he’s out enjoying himself, golfing this morning and going to the Super Bowl this afternoon.

• Republicans in the U.S. Senate made Russell Vought (a primary architect of Project 2025) the new head of the Office of Management and Budget. He has promptly shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which until now had acted to protect consumers from unethical business practices by large financial institutions. Vought directed them to cease all investigations, and their web site is “not found.” Musk posted “CFPB RIP.”
  
  
• Republicans in the House of Representatives are debating taxing college scholarships as income.
  
  
• Seven transgender people backed by the ACLU sued in Boston on Friday to restore the ability to change the gender marker (including to “X”) on U.S. passports. The case is pending.
  
  
• Trump claims that he plans to fire much of the board of The Kennedy Center (a large performing arts center in Washington, D.C.) and install himself as its chairman, because the current group “do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.” The Kennedy Center says they haven’t heard from him, but that he cannot do this. Though they present a wide range of art and entertainment, two Republicans in Congress accused them in January of "subsidizing Chinese Communist Party propaganda," because they hosted a five-day run of performances by the National Ballet of China.
  

—

The other day, I included a meme that there was “no song to explain” what’s happening to the federal government right now, but I’d forgotten about this, which I’d shared prior to the election. There *is* a song. Here’s the original, uncut version that was posted in September: The Project 2025 Song.

Trump World, day 20 (Sat., 2/8, 1:30 PM EST)

• A judge granted a temporary restraining order yesterday, preventing at least 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on leave, plus reinstating another 500. Further, the order directs that no USAID workers be evacuated from their host countries before next Friday. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday.
  
  
• 19 states’ attorneys general were granted a heightened restraining order last night, protecting the data in the systems of the Treasury Department. The order blocks access to all of DOGE, all special government employees, others from outside the department, and anyone “other than civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.” It also demands that any copies of data taken from Treasury’s systems be destroyed.
  
  
• A different judge denied a request to block DOGE from accessing the Department of Labor.
  
  
• Trump agrees with Vance, that Musk should bring back the DOGE employee who resigned when his history of racist posts became public.
  
  
• Trump has directed DOGE to go into the Pentagon, though that hasn’t happened yet.
  
  
• A few days ago, I shared that the Pentagon was removing the desks of reputable news organizations, and replacing them with Trump-allied “news.” Yesterday, the Pentagon announced they are making more such changes. The Washington Post, CNN, and The Hill will be replaced with Newsmax, The Daily Caller, and The Washington Examiner. (The groups losing their desks have not had their press credentials revoked and still have access to the building.)
  
  
• The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (which receives most of its funding from the Department of Justice) was directed to comply with Trump’s “gender ideology” directives or lose its money. It has since removed public web pages that use words like “transgender.”
  
  
• However, some people have been further claiming that now the NCMEC is supposed to use the deadnames (the names given at birth) and sexes assigned at birth of missing trans and intersex kids. I have been unable to confirm this apart from social media and similar posts, and I hope it’s fear and not fact. If it is true, it will obviously make it harder to find such missing kids than if you were using accurate fundamental details like their actual names and correct genders.
  
  
• Community health centers in rural areas of at least seven U.S. states still cannot access their federal funding, since the “rescinded” freeze last week. Some healthcare locations are now temporarily closed, since they cannot pay their staff.
  
  
• Protests continue to arise or continue at locations across the country, including protests in Los Angeles for six days in a row. Yesterday, about 1,000 high school students protested there in front of city hall.
  
  
• Meanwhile, on a highway overpass a few miles outside Cincinnati yesterday, there was a small demonstration by people waving flags with swastikas. Local residents confronted the demonstrators, who quickly left.
  
  
• The plane that went missing in Alaska was found. It had crashed, and all ten on board were killed. This is the fourth accident and third fatal air disaster since Trump fired the head of the FAA.
  
  
• The head of the Federal Election Commission, who initially refused to be fired, has been locked out of her physical office and her email.
  
  
• The governor of Illinois posted a parody video yesterday, in which he declares that henceforth Lake Michigan will be known as “Lake Illinois” and more. (“Bear down” is a reference to the fight song of the Chicago Bears football team.) Here’s the clip: Lake Illinois.
  
  

Trump World, day 19 (Fri., 2/7, 3 PM):

• USAID is laying off somewhere between 8,000 and 13,000 people. Latest reports are that it will keep 611 permanent staff from the U.S. USAID staffers have been barred from talking to anyone outside their agency, which is intended to keep us from hearing about the many crises and preventable deaths that will ensue if this proceeds.
  
  
• The Secretary of State still insists that this is the only way to get USAID workers to stop trying to work around Trump’s freeze on foreign aid money. To be clear, these people are working to help the starving, the sick, and the war-torn and are attempting to foster democracy in countries where it is in peril. These are noble, globally stabilizing efforts that should be applauded, not condemned. USAID are heroes.
  
  
• Trump and Musk say USAID is completely corrupt. Workers are currently scraping its name from its building.
  
  
• Workers’ unions are suing to stop the breakup. Unfortunately, the case has been assigned to a judge that Trump appointed. The hearing is supposed to be later today. [Update, 5:15 PM: A temporary restraining order was granted, to keep at least 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on leave. More info tomorrow.]
  
  
• A directive from the Department of Transportation says that federal funds should be withheld from state or local governments that institute mask or vaccine mandates.
  
  
• DOGE is in the Department of Education. They have access to student loans and students’ financial aid filings. Democratic Congresspeople attempted to gain access to Education’s headquarters this morning, but were physically blocked; they were similarly blocked from entering the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday.
  
  
• One of DOGE’s people (Marko Elez, 25, one of the two still permitted into Treasury by court order, and who previously had the ability to rewrite all of the system’s code) resigned when it was discovered that he had many social media posts promoting racism and eugenics. “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool… Normalize Indian hate… I just want a eugenic immigration policy.” Etc.
  
  
• JD Vance publicly wants to bring Elez back. Elon Musk is running a survey on X whether to reinstate him, that was showing 80% yes at 10:30 this morning. Musk also called the reporter who broke the story a “disgusting and cruel person” and said he should be fired.
  
  
• An ally of Musk (Tom Krause, not currently in DOGE) was just tapped to serve as an assistant secretary in Treasury, and assigned to oversee their payment system. So Musk is back in control, despite the court order blocking DOGE.
  
  
• In yet another potential air disaster under Trump’s FAA, a plane carrying ten people has gone missing in Alaska. A search and rescue mission has so far found nothing.
  
  
• Trump is blaming the “antiquated” air traffic control system for these mishaps, even though they weren’t happening until he took control and (among other things) fired the head of the FAA. As I already mentioned, he wants to upgrade the whole system with DOGE’s help. Now, reports are surfacing that he wants to give the entire new system to *one* company to control and maintain, a company that can integrate satellite monitoring into the ground-based systems. Speculation is that this means he wants to give control of our airspace to Elon Musk, to integrate with Starlink.
  
  
• The Trump administration is suing Chicago (and Illinois) for its sanctuary city policies.
  
  
• ABC News reports that three state’s attorneys general are suing to overturn *all* of Trump’s bans on federal money being spent for gender-affirming care, especially for young people.
  
  
• Trump sent the long-time head of the Federal Election Commission a letter, firing her. She refuses to go, contending (correctly) that it’s illegal for him to simply terminate her.
  
  
• Next week, Trump will reverse Biden’s efforts to promote alternatives to plastic straws. Trump posted, “BACK TO PLASTIC!”
  

—

The rest of this post is a deeper look at Trump’s executive order to “eradicate anti-Christian bias”:

I shared yesterday that Trump wants to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” from the federal government. On the surface, that sounds relatively benign, like something you could reasonably ignore amid the deluge of other foulness spewing from the Trump administration.

Unfortunately, this runs deep. Trump is creating a task force, including the heads of many critical departments (including State, Education, Treasury, and Homeland Security), to ferret out anything that he contends shows an “anti-Christian” bias.

Please understand that the federal government is intended to be neutral about religion. It isn’t meant to have any religious bias, just a bias toward common decency, morality, and ethics, as well as support for a diverse population of people of all faiths.

There is no evidence of a systemic government bias against Christianity. To radical far Right churches, however, they see a bias in anything that limits them or that runs contrary to their beliefs. It is these people that Trump wishes to protect, to the likely detriment of everyone else. Some examples to drive this home, taken directly from the text of yesterday’s executive order as it is posted to WhiteHouse.gov:

• “The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government.” Not entirely true. One cannot commit illegal acts in the name of one’s faith, without government “retaliation.” It is not “discrimination” to prohibit such illegal acts.
  
  
• “The Biden Department of Justice sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing Federal criminal charges… against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities.” False. Trump pardoned the people he believes were targeted this way. Of those people, if the pro-life activists themselves did not directly commit acts of violence, destruction of property, or placement of illegal blockades, they were convicted of conspiracy to do so. Biden’s DoJ didn’t systematically put innocent people in jail.
  
  
• “The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith.” Fair treatment for everyone is what’s enshrined in the Constitution, not support for Christians who have sought to literally turn away LGBTQ people from such things as equal employment or receiving *any* healthcare at their facility.
  
  
• “The Biden Department of Health and Human Services sought to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the foster-care system.” Homosexual and transgender people have a right to be foster parents or adopt. If you say they don’t, you are the one who is discriminating.
  
  
• “The Biden Administration declared March 31, 2024 — Easter Sunday — as ‘Transgender Day of Visibility.’” False. The Transgender Day of Visibility was set in 2010 by an advocate in Michigan, as March 31st. It doesn’t move. Easter, however, is on a different day every year. In 2024, they happened to be the same day. The far Right went a little crazy about this, as though Biden had declared Easter a transgender holiday, simply by acknowledging its existence.
  
  
• “In this atmosphere of anti-Christian government… Catholic churches and institutions have been aggressively targeted with hundreds of acts of hostility, violence, and vandalism.” This is misleading. There have been higher numbers of acts of vandalism against religious buildings of all faiths in recent years. Catholic churches are at the low end, however, compared to (for example) synagogues and mosques. There were two hundred bomb threats against synagogues in one *day* in 2023.
  
  
• The evidence so strongly suggests that far Right radicals (who call themselves Christians) are to blame for the majority of the trouble that the FBI tried to say so in a memo in 2023, but had to retract it because it’s not permissible to single out anyone because of their religion.
  
  
• The many departments and agencies in the executive order are instructed to “identify deficiencies in existing laws and enforcement and regulatory practices that have contributed to unlawful anti-Christian governmental or private conduct.” This is the crux of it. Trump is beating the anti-DEI drum — only now he’s targeting any law or rule that specifically supports Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans, atheists, etc. — while refuting valid legislation that limits immoral or unethical behavior by far Right radicals who call themselves Christians.
  

Trump also announced plans to create a White House Faith Office. If you ignore what seems like a clear violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state, that sounds maybe… okay?

The person he tapped to head this office is televangelist Rev. Paula White. She is a leader in the Independent Charismatic Movement and a proponent of “prosperity theology.” Wikipedia explains its tenets as including “Material and especially financial success is seen as evidence of divine grace or favor and blessings.” In other words, the wealthy are the most blessed among us, to Rev. White.

And… in 2020, she prayed for “all Satanic pregnancies” to miscarry. She reportedly said that Trump “put the Christ back in Christmas.” I’ve been told (though I cannot yet find a firm citation beyond Yahoo News) that she said this:

“Christ’s likeness is not found in my gender, it is not found in my culture, it is not found in my ethnicity, it is not found in KKK, it is not found in Antifa, and it is not found in Black Lives Matter. All of which are anti-Christ, and even terrorist organizations.”

Make of that what you will, but she doesn’t sound like an impartial leader for a probably-not-Constitutional Faith Office. However, it does sound like she’ll fit in just fine with the rest of Trump’s menagerie.

Trump World, day 18 (Thur., 2/6, 4 PM):

• The U.S. District judge (appointed by Ronald Reagan) who had to block the executive order ending birthright citizenship a second time slightly lost his cool as he announced his ruling: “It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain. Nevertheless, in this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.”
  
  
• Trump is creating a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias [and] discrimination within the federal government… Let’s bring religion back.” There goes separation of church and state, I guess.
  
  
• Multiple Republicans have tried to walk back Trump’s plan for Gaza, saying we all misunderstood him, though Trump continues to reiterate the same plan. However, he has said it could be done using only Israeli forces and no American troops: “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.” Israel’s military is drawing up a plan for the Palestinian’s “voluntary” migration.
  
  
• The buyout offer has been extended to the NSA, but a judge issued a temporary injunction (until Monday) on *all* the buyouts as the case brought by the unions is reviewed. For most of the federal government, the offer was going to end today, but is extended until Monday. The White House claimed it was “grateful” to the judge for extending the offer. So far, reports are that 3% of the federal work force (about 60,000) have accepted.
  
  
• The CIA sent the White House an unclassified email (reportedly sent unclassified at the request of the White House) listing the first names and last initials of everyone hired in the past two years. This is being decried as a horrendous security breach that will now prevent agents with unusual first names from being deployed, since foreign counterintelligence will be able to identify them by matching those names to other records.
  
  
• The International Criminal Court last year accused leaders in both Israel and Hamas of war crimes. Trump plans an executive order today that will place sanctions on members of the court and their families, for including Israel.
  
  
• There were successful protests in at least 14 states’ capitols yesterday, and no reports of trouble at those events. (I haven’t been able to determine how many were canceled or scaled back.)
  
  
• Rep. Mark Pocan (Wisconsin) said he is introducing the Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy (ELON MUSK) Act. This act would make it illegal for Special Government Employees (like Musk) to also have business contracts with the U.S. government. This would prevent conflicts of interest, and is similar to the rules imposed on Congress members and others. Musk has $20 billion in federal contracts.
  
  
• House minority leader Jeffries said Democrats are introducing the Tax Data Collection Act to protect taxpayers’ names, social security numbers, addresses, and bank account information in Treasury systems.
  
  
• A temporary court order prevents all but two of DOGE’s people from further accessing the Treasury Department’s computers, and those two are prohibited from changing anything else.
  
  
• DOGE is in the CDC and the Department of Health & Human Services. They’ve tried to get into the Department of Labor, but may not have succeeded yet. Reports say they’ve taken down climate change data from NOAA.
  
  
• Musk says, “Medicare is where the big money fraud is happening.” Medicare by itself is about 1/7th of all federal spending, but that doesn’t make it fraudulent, just expensive. Reports say that Republicans will not rule out Medicare or Medicaid cuts in the budget they’re working on this month.
  
  
• The State Department posted last night that U.S. government vessels could now travel the Panama canal for free, but the president of Panama today called that an “intolerable falsehood.” This afternoon, the State Department retracted their claim, but said that is what’s being worked on.
  
  
• Trump plans to pressure the International Olympic Committee to ban transgender women from competing in *all* Olympic games, anywhere. (The IOC currently defers to the rules of the governing body of each individual sport.)
  
  
• The organization that oversees college sports in the U.S. has agreed to comply and block all transgender girls and women from competing in female sports. I haven’t been able to determine if this also blocks trans folks from participating in their sports at all, from using single-sex sports-related facilities, etc.
  
  
• After firing the female four-star admiral who had been head of the Coast Guard (for being too supportive of DEI), Trump’s administration had her evicted from her residence with three hours’ notice.
  
  
• The FBI has a task force dedicated to preventing foreign powers from interfering in U.S. elections. The new U.S. Attorney General is disbanding that task force.
  
  
• Many health centers are reporting that they still can’t access their federal funds. Maine’s largest community health center (Penobscot) employs 850 people. At last report, they have still been unable to access their federal funding since the “rescinded” freeze. If they are unable to access their funds by tomorrow, reports say that they will have to furlough 25% of their staff. Why their money is frozen is unknown, but for years they have proudly proclaimed themselves “a leader in LGBTQIA+ Healthcare Equality” with recognition by the Human Rights Campaign.
  
  

Trump World, day 17, part 2 (Wed., 2/5, 5 PM EST):

A second post today.

• Rep. Al Green (Texas), addressing the House of Representatives: “The movement to impeach the president has begun… I rise to announce that I will bring articles of impeachment against the president for dastardly deeds proposed and dastardly deeds done… Ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world."

• Rep. Al Green (Texas), addressing the House of Representatives: “The movement to impeach the president has begun… I rise to announce that I will bring articles of impeachment against the president for dastardly deeds proposed and dastardly deeds done… Ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world."


• While the current House of Representatives is unlikely to impeach Trump just yet, voting would force each member to go on record as supporting or denouncing Trump.
  
  
• As I wrote earlier, the FBI provided 5,000+ names of the people involved in prosecuting the Capitol rioters. The FBI did comply. But that’s a lot of people, more than 1/8 of the entire Bureau, and perhaps too many to fire all at once. So the Deputy Attorney General has repeatedly asked the Director of the FBI to “identify the core team” responsible for the prosecutions, which the FBI Director is refusing to do.
  
  
• The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was urged to subpoena Elon Musk to ask some questions. The ranking Democrat asked, “Who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence?” The situation quickly devolved into a shouting match: “This is demagoguery. This is out of order.” “Order. Order. Order.” “You're out of order. You know you're out of order. You know the rules of this committee. There's been a motion --" “Mr. Elon Musk is out of order!”
  
  
• Once things calmed down, Republicans succeeded in rejecting the motion in a 20-19 vote, but they called the vote while one Democrat (Ro Khanna, California) was out of the room. He was counted as abstaining. Khanna said, “They called a procedural vote without notice… Musk’s attacks on our institutions are unconstitutional. He should be subpoenaed & answer to our committee. They should call the vote again with notice.” To which Musk responded, “Don’t be a d*ck.”
  
  
• Democrats are planning an all-nighter to keep talking in the U.S. Senate and jam it to a halt, in protest of DOGE and Trump’s nomination of a primary architect of Project 2025 (Russell Vought) to head the Office of Management and Budget. They cannot block the vote for Vought, but they are able to stall it and everything else for 30 hours if they keep talking.
  
  
• Continuing the string of air-related problems, two planes collided while taxiing on the ground today at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. No injuries were reported. The airport was briefly closed and both flights were moved to different aircraft.
  
  
• The Department of Transportation announced that DOGE will soon help “upgrade” the air traffic control system.
  
  
• DOGE is in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
  
  
• A coalition of unions sued today to block DOGE *before* it gets into the Department of Labor.
  
  
• Deportees being sent to Guantanamo Bay will be held in “tent camps,” because the buildings there are much too small to hold them all.
  
  
• Guatemala has agreed to accept deportees belonging to other countries, to which it will forward them at U.S. expense.
  
  
• Trump announced that he will bar foreign transgender women from participating in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, by denying them visas to enter the country.
  
  
• About the court order that I mentioned earlier, which prevented the three transgender women from being transferred to a men’s prison: The order temporarily “enjoins and restrains” federal prisons from moving *any* transgender woman to a men’s prison, and similarly prevents prisons from withholding gender-affirming medical care, both under the 8th Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment).
  
  
• So far so good on today’s 50501 protests, which are scheduled to run until at least 11 PM EST.
  
  
• A crowd of hundreds gathered again today at USAID’s headquarters, along with a group of Democratic representatives from the House and Senate, who took turns speaking. The words were mostly fiery, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) acknowledged that Americans allowed this to happen, and now options are limited. “We are where we are because we lost a presidential election and we lost two houses in November. We have a lot more tools in majority than we do in minority.”
  
  
• U.S. embassies in many of the countries where USAID operates have called emergency gatherings for the thousands of agency staffers and contractors who have been cast adrift. Embassy officials say they were given no guidance on what to tell staff local to the countries they are in.
  
  
• Sen. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) fell down a small flight of stairs today and is now in a wheelchair “as a precaution.” McConnell was instrumental in keeping Trump in power during Trump’s first term, but lately seems to be reconsidering.
  
  
• Arab Americans for Trump, who campaigning hard to get its folks to vote for him, has had a change of heart. They are now Arab Americans for Peace.
  
  

Trump World, day 17, part 1 (Wed., 2/5, 11:30 AM EST):

There may be a second post today. A lot is happening. Victories are near the bottom of the post this morning, because the first couple of bullets are urgent.

• As I speculated yesterday, today’s protests at the states’ capitols (at least in Maine) are being infiltrated by bad actors. Maine’s permit holder canceled our event. Please do not attend. If too many people show up, MAGA might be able to commit acts of violence or destruction, then blame it on the Left.
  
  
• If MAGA has infiltrated the protests nationwide (we don’t know, maybe it was just Maine?), it’s probably too late to stop whatever is going to happen. The Associated Press ran an article this morning about 50501.
  
  
• It took months of careful, painstaking work for Biden and Harris to broker a ceasefire around Gaza, without taking sides. It is a complex, delicate, tragic situation… to which Trump took an axe yesterday, by reiterating his intention to build a new American Empire: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too… We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs.” He wants to forcibly relocate all the Palestinians, raze what’s left of Palestine, and build a new American colony there. This wasn’t stated as as a possibility. It was stated as “We will.” He suggested sending our troops, and said it will become the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
  
  
• The majority of Congressional Republicans are backing Trump. The Speaker of the House said, “This is a good development.” Rep. Nancy Mace said, in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago.”
  
  
• Trump’s declaration was met with swift condemnation from American allies and adversaries alike: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Turkey, and more. I won’t bother listing their very firmly or angrily worded responses. After our efforts this week to tank the global economy with unnecessary tariffs, the world has had just about enough of us.
  
  
• The Gaza ceasefire, however, is still holding for the moment.
  
  
• USAID has been ordered to withdraw from its operations across the entire planet, back to the U.S. Some reports say they must shut down by Saturday, others say that workers must return in the next 33 days. Exceptions could be made for those deemed “essential,” but no one seems to know who that is (if anyone).
  
  
• Pete Marocco, the person the Secretary of State tapped to head what’s left of USAID, has a history of destructive management practices and was filmed climbing into the Capitol through a broken window during the January 6th riot.
  
  
• To sum up this week (and it’s only Wednesday morning): we’ve attempted a trade war with our closest allies and proceeded on one with China; we are stopping our good work with 130 countries around the globe; and we have deliberately torpedoed the fragile peace in the Middle East.
  
  
• Perhaps sensing that our actual adversaries might take advantage of the U.S. turning all the countries of Earth against us, Trump issued a harsh directive against Iran and ordered that, if Iran has him assassinated, they are to be “obliterated.”
  
  
• Democrats, of course, have fired back in the strongest of terms. The rhetoric has risen to the point where some are accusing him of “ethnic cleansing.” People are irate.
  
  
• If it isn’t clear by now, we are at a flashpoint. If MAGA can lead or encourage rioting (or worse) today or soon across the country, as I explained yesterday with regard to the Antifa Bill, this may be America’s moment to do what Germany did after the Reichstag fire in 1933 (very stupid, short-sighted things that lead to a world war and the Holocaust)… or it may be our moment to learn from history and realize the very grave situation we are in, and start to fix it before it’s too late.
  
  
• Yesterday, the buyout offer was extended to almost everyone at the CIA.
  
  
• As instructed, the FBI had collected the names and details of more than 5,000 people who worked on the Capitol riot cases. Yesterday, they turned that information over to the Justice Department.
  
  
• DOGE got into NOAA (weather forecasts and history, climate change data).
  
  
• It is being suggested anecdotally that, if you have used a bank account to receive tax refunds directly from the federal government, you get a new account. DOGE may have your bank account and routing numbers.
  
  
• More states are attempting to mimick Trump by creating their own versions of DOGE. In addition to Oklahoma (which I mentioned yesterday), other states that are working on mimicking some version include New Hampshire, Iowa, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Idaho, Texas, Kansas, and Missouri.
  
  
• The OPM is threatening to fire anyone who has worked for the federal government for less than one year. Supervisors have until today to justify keeping their recent staff.
  
  
• NBC News reports that a website calling itself “DEI Watch List” has published the names, photos, and public information about (mostly Black) federal health workers who have been involved in DEI initiatives or who had pronouns in their signatures. They were reportedly listed under the title of Targets, though that was later changed to Dossiers.
  
  
• The National Science Foundation is reviewing 10,000 grants to see which ones should be canceled to comply with Trump’s directives. The keywords used to flag the potential cuts reportedly include: activism, advocacy, barrier, black, cultural, latinx, people of color, and women.
  
  
• Trump is planning an executive order banning transgender women and girls from female sports.
  
  
• The FAFSA student aid form will no longer have non-binary as an option.
  
  
• The Department of the Interior is considering redrawing the boundaries of national monuments, starting with a couple in Utah, to allow companies to mine for materials (such as coal and uranium) that are currently in protected lands.
  
  
• Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service announced it would stop accepting parcels coming from China or Hong Kong. They have reversed that today.
  
  
• I’d previously reported that the temporary protected status of Venezuelans in the U.S. had bad been dialed back from autumn 2025 to this September. Now, for 350,000 of them, it’s April.
  
  
• Trump got it in his head that California’s water conservation efforts were partially to blame for the wildfires, so he ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to open dams and release water from reservoirs in the middle of the state. There was no way for that water to reach Los Angeles. In a state that has struggled with drought, 2.2 billion gallons were released, most of which is now sitting in (what was) a dry lake bed. That water was being held so central California farmers could use it for irrigation in the dry days of summer.
  
  
• This country is so Great Again.
  
  
• Speaking about the possibility of sending American citizen prisoners to El Salvador, the Secretary of State said, “There are obvious legalities involved. We have a Constitution… But it’s a very generous offer. No one’s ever made an offer like that — to outsource, at a fraction of the cost, some of the most dangerous and violent criminals we have in the United States. But obviously, the administration will have to make a decision.”
  
  
• Google has retracted its previous policy. They will now allow their artificial intelligence to be used for weapons or surveillance.
  
  
• Without a hint of irony, JD Vance said today that the administration plans to increase its efforts to expand religious freedom, and cited Trump’s pardoning of destructive anti-abortion activists as an example. Vance said, “Both at home and abroad, we have much more to do to more fully secure religious liberty for all people of faith.”
  
  
• A coalition of unions has sued to block the buyout offered to federal employees.
  
  
• A second judge has issued a temporary restraining order against ending birthright citizenship.
  
  
• A non-profit representing 27,000 medical professionals has sued to have the health information restored to federal government websites.
  
  
• Three transgender women (so far) have successfully received a temporary injunction to keep themselves from being transferred to men’s prisons or having their hormone therapy cut off.
  
• The mayor of Baltimore is pushing back on anti-DEI efforts by announcing a “Definitely Earned It” campaign as part of the city’s celebrations of Black History Month.
  
  
• The Proud Boys (a radical far Right group instrumental in the Capitol riot) vandalized a church in D.C. in 2020. Yesterday, a judge gave the church a lien on the “Proud Boys” trademark and the power to block the group from using that phrase on merchandise without the church’s permission.
  

Trump World, day 16 (Tue., 2/4, 4 PM EST):

• A coalition of unions is suing to get DOGE out of the systems of the Treasury Department. A coalition of civil rights groups is suing to prevent mass deportations and the suspension of asylum under the guise of an “invasion” that does not exist. FBI employees are suing to prevent dissemination of lists of who worked on cases related to the Capitol riot. Seven families and a couple of national organizations are suing to stop the ban on federal support for transgender people under the age of 19.
  
  
• The Attorney General of New York State advised doctors and hospitals to continue providing care to transgender and intersex patients. She pointed out it is state law, and said that the restraining orders against the federal funding freeze prevent the federal government from withholding payments to people with federally-funded insurance.
  
  
• Nonetheless, federal funding remains frozen on many grants from the federal government, despite two court orders instructing that the freezes be lifted. The Justice Department acknowledged the most recent court order (from yesterday) and pledged to inform agencies of it, but DoJ says the order “contains several ambiguous terms and provisions that could be read to constitute significant intrusions on the executive branch’s lawful authorities and the separation of powers.”
  
  
• The Justice Department is threatening legal action against “anyone who impedes” Elon Musk or DOGE.
  
  
• DOGE has infiltrated the General Services Administration (which, among other things, manages U.S. government real estate), the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Education. They have installed their own server in the Office of Personnel Management.
  
  
• Musk reportedly said on a live feed yesterday, speaking of his destruction of the federal government, “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have.”
  
  
• The governor of Oklahoma announced he’s creating his own DOGE for that state.
  
  
• El Salvador has agreed to accept prisoners of all nationalities, from the United States. This includes deportees who are not from El Salvador, as well as American citizens. Undesirable Americans could soon be shipped there, as well as to Cuba.
  
  
• The first flight of deportees has left for the detention center in Guantanamo Bay (that’s Cuba).
  
  
• After the stock and cryptocurrency markets fell steeply, Canada and Trump agreed yesterday to pause their tariffs on each other for a month. Trump crowed about getting a $1.3 billion-dollar border plan from Canada, but Canada had established that plan in December; all they did was agree to proceed, as planned. Canada’s only new concession appears to have been to agree to appoint a “Fentanyl Czar.”
  
  
• Tariffs did go into effect on China. We routinely import almost half a trillion dollars worth of goods from China per year. China responded with tariffs of its own.
  
  
• The Secretary of State said that USAID had to be dismantled because it “refused to respond to policy directives of the State Department.” In other words, it had attempted to continue doing its good work in opposition to Trump.
  
  
• Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) has placed a “blanket hold” on approving further Trump nominees for the State Department, unless USAID is restored to operations. This only means that Democrats will use every available means to delay those nominees from being approved. Democrats are a minority, and cannot prevent the confirmations entirely, without help from a few Republicans.
  
  
• Among the very many programs frozen through USAID is recovery efforts and humanitarian aid in the West Bank and Gaza.
  
  
• Today, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council and UNRWA. He also ordered a review of our involvement in UNESCO.
  
  
• Trump is reportedly working on an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education next.
  
  
• A Department of Transportation memo says that funding should henceforth be preferentially given to “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” Consider that wording for a moment. It’s the same idea as DEI, but in reverse. It explicitly favors younger, straight, married couples over everyone else.
  
  
• Approximately 1% of the federal workforce have agreed to take the buyout, so far.
  
  
• The Pentagon is “rotating out” the news desks of the New York Times, National Public Radio, and NBC. They are being replaced with desks for pro-Trump outlets Brietbart, One America News, and the New York Post.
  
  

—

The remainder of this post is a discussion about protests and a recent bill in Congress:

On January 9th, a bill (H. Res. 26) was introduced to Congress that would label “Antifa” a terrorist organization. The bill lists a bunch of incidents of damage that have occurred at or around left-leaning demonstrations since 2016, though some of the acts may have been misrepresented or done by people on the Right. It then proceeds to lump all of these occurrences together as perpetrated by “Antifa.”

“Antifa” just means anti-fascist. There is no centralized militant group called “Antifa.” Broadly, this term could refer to anyone who is anti-Trump.

Without defining the group or its constituents further, the bill goes on to ask that any “unlawful conduct at an Antifa-affiliated demonstration… be deemed domestic terrorism.” Further, it asks that “Antifa” be deemed “a domestic terrorist organization” and it calls on the Justice Department to “use all available tools and resources to combat the spread of domestic terrorism.”

On the surface, this bill appears to be overly vague and unlikely to pass. A group of senators floated a similar bill in 2019.

Americans have a wide latitude to freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly. These rights have been on display the past few days at protests in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and DC, among others.

However, tomorrow, we may walk into a trap. The “50501 Movement” (that’s pronounced “fifty-fifty-one”) has called for demonstrations at all 50 states’ capitols on the same day, organizing via Reddit and BlueSky. I’ve shared information about these protests the past two days. The flyers say “Reject Fascism,” which is obviously anti-fascist.

**THIS PARAGRAPH IS PURE OVER-THE-TOP FICTION** If one was an evil genius hellbent on destroying the United States, this would be a golden opportunity. MAGA could encourage the worst of the pardoned Capitol rioters to infiltrate the crowds tomorrow and cause trouble, maybe plant some bombs. Then, when things go down, MAGA blames Antifa. Trump’s people in the Justice Department concur. There’s outrage. Suddenly, the Antifa bill (“the 50501 Movement organized this in all 50 states! it’s them!”) isn’t stuck in committee anymore, but passes. Now it’s illegal to protest about Trump, or they can send you to Cuba or El Salvador. Musk shuts off all payments to anyone who might conceivably complain. For supporting terrorism, Reddit is shut down and BlueSky is blocked from the United States. Martial law is declared to deal with the national emergency. Just like that, by next Monday or so, it’s all over, and millions of Americans never even knew it was happening.

Again, I have to stress, that is fiction. It is probably, hopefully, please God a wildly over-exaggerated story. It’s a scenario that shouldn’t and couldn’t possibly happen, except in the movies. Surely, even Trump wouldn’t physically hurt Americans to achieve his goals, and Congress and the courts would act before things got so out of hand.

But maybe MAGA just uses tomorrow to start greasing the wheels, by making peaceful protests appear otherwise. Obviously, they want to find a way to galvanize uninformed people against anyone who is anti-Trump, and distract from themselves while they complete their coup.

So, please, it is crucial that anyone in or around the capitols now through Friday be especially vigilant. Film anything suspicious. Notify police, if necessary.

[Update, 6 PM: Some of the people I’ve been following who were planning tomorrow’s event in Maine have confirmed that it’s been infiltrated by bad actors. One of the groups states now that they have revoked their own permit application. I strongly suggest skipping tomorrow’s event.]

Trump World, day 15 (Mon., 2/3, 2 PM EST):

• The Wednesday protests I wrote about yesterday continue to come together. The permit holder for Maine’s protest kindly replied to my post yesterday (thank you!), and confirmed it’s 12 to 8. She also provided the flyer I’ve attached below. [Update, 2/4, 6 PM: This event has been canceled by the permit holder. It was infiltrated by bad actors. I’ve removed the flyer that had been shown below.]
  
  
• A number of restaurants are closed in Washington, DC today, in a protest called “a day without immigrants.”
  
  
• Trump and Mexico have agreed to delay the tariffs on each other for a month. Mexico agreed to send 10,000 members of its National Guard to monitor its northern border against fentanyl trafficking. In exchange, Trump agreed to take action to reduce the trafficking of high-powered firearms into Mexico.
  
  
• Canada’s prime minister is scheduled to talk with Trump this afternoon, to see if a solution can be found, but Canadians seem quite angry. The Premier of Ontario (a Canadian province) said he will be "banning American companies from provincial contracts… We’ll be ripping up the province’s contract with [Musk’s] Starlink… Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy." Ontario is also removing all American liquor from the shelves of its government-run liquor stores, which they say amounts to nearly a billion dollars a year. [Update, 5:30 PM: Canada and Trump have agreed to wait 30 days to impose tariffs on each other. More details tomorrow.]
  
  
• Yesterday, Musk’s people (DOGE) showed up at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), demanding entrance. Security said no. DOGE threatened to call the U.S. Marshalls. Security eventually relented. Once inside, DOGE demanded access to classified materials. USAID administrators said no, and physically blocked the invaders. Those administrators were quickly placed on leave, and removed. DOGE got access to the materials. Later, Musk continued his series of negative posts about USAID, saying “USAID is criminal organization. Time for it to die.” (A few days ago, he posted that USAID is “a radical-left political psy op.”) Trump said last night about USAID, “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out.”
  
  
• Today, Musk posted that Trump had agreed with him to shut down USAID completely. Several hundred more staffers are locked out of its computer systems. Yellow police tape and officers are blocking the lobby at USAID headquarters in Washington. Their website is down. At least one of the exterior physical signs was reportedly down, though their flag is still up. Staffers who still have computer access have been told the building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.” Congressional Democrats are being denied access, even to the lobby.
  
  
• The Associated Press spoke today with a member of the State Department, who was looking at the USAID flag, who said, “I just want to pay my respects.”
  
  
• USAID formerly provided aid to 120 countries and had an annual budget of 50 billion dollars, approved by Congress. They employed thousands of people, many of whom are already furloughed. Foreign aid money remains frozen. Whatever is left of USAID is being placed under the control of Trump’s Secretary of State. This allows it to remain as an empty token, so Trump can tell Congress it still exists and avoid repercussions for closing it entirely.
  
  
• Democrat Gerry Connolly of the House Oversight Committee said this afternoon, to a crowd that had gathered outside USAID’s main office, “We are going to fight in every way we can, in the courts, in public opinion, with the bully pulpit, in the halls of Congress and here at USAID itself. We are not going to let this injustice happen.”
  
  
• The government is currently slated to shut down on March 14th, unless Congress approves a spending bill. As the federal government is currently configured, Democrats still have the power to block the spending bill, which some (such as the House minority leader) are threatening to do if Trump’s people don’t cease their most egregious actions. Democrats are reportedly also going to introduce legislation to block “unlawful access” to information systems operated by federal agencies like the Treasury Department, in response to DOGE’s activities — but, of course, Republicans would have to go along with such a bill for it to pass.
  
  
• A couple of Republicans quietly pointed out that Trump’s buyout program for federal workers is illegal. He’s promising to spend money that hasn’t been approved by Congress, which is prohibited by the Anti-Deficiency Act. As a result, a spokesperson for OPM replied that, indeed, no federal employees' buyout pay will be guaranteed, unless approved by Congress.
  
  
• Despite the rescission of the wide-ranging federal funding freeze last week, a variety of non-profits are reporting that their funding is still frozen or that systems that should provide it are not functional. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan earlier today said she is inclined to grant a request from a coalition of domestic non-profit groups for a temporary restraining order, requiring the government to release federal funds that have been frozen since last week. AliKhan said she intends to issue a written ruling by 5 PM today.
  
  
• All CDC grant recipients have received this directive from the Department of Health and Human Services: “You must immediately terminate, to the maximum extent, all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts promoting or inculcating gender ideology at every level and activity, regardless of your location or the citizenship of employees or contractors…. Any vestige, remnant, or re-named piece of any gender ideology programs funded by the U.S. government under this award are immediately, completely, and permanently terminated.” Per ABC News, “this impacts any entity that receives CDC funds, such as local health departments and clinics, and it affects any programs supported by the nearly $4.5 billion spent by the CDC last year to aid health departments across all 50 states.”
  
  
• Among the websites that have gone dark under Trump is Rural.gov, the portal for the federally-led Rural Partners Network. A different site says their mandate is “taking action to transform the way the federal government partners with rural communities to spur inclusive, sustainable economic growth, [by creating] an alliance of federal agencies and civic partners working to expand rural prosperity through job creation, infrastructure development, and community improvement.” Their site just says, “The site is offline.”
  
  
• More than a thousand FBI agents have now received questionnaires about their involvement in prosecuting the Capitol rioters, due tomorrow.
  
  
• Claiming it was having trouble keeping up with the volume of email inquiries about last week’s plane crashes, the NTSB announced it would send further updates only on Elon Musk’s X. It bears watching to see if X becomes the official state media organization under Trump.
  
  

Trump World, day 14 (Sun., 2/2, 12:30 PM):

• There appears to a grassroots campaign coming together, for people to protest the actions of the Trump administration at all 50 states’ capitols on Wednesday. Because of the way this is happening via social media, details are a little sketchy and I can’t tell so far what kind of attendance there will be. At this point, the best resource nationwide is Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/ You should see a button there for each state. In Maine, Reddit says two groups are going, one at noon and one at 6 PM, so the entire protest may run 12 to 8. [Update, 2/4, 6 PM: This event has been infiltrated by bad actors. Do not attend.]
  
  
• Trump declared an economic emergency, then signed the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, plus a smaller one on China. Canada and Mexico responded with their own; thus begins an unnecessary trade war with our own allies. Our tariffs go into effect on Tuesday. In a small mercy to the American people, the tariff on oil is 10% instead of the 25% on everything else. This means that, where gasoline would have quickly gone up 70 cents a gallon, it will “only” rise 30 cents a gallon.
  
  
• On this topic, Trump posted “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID." He also posted “Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!”
  
  
• Trump is meeting with Israel’s Netanyahu to discuss what Netanyahu referred to as “victory over Hamas.” Hamas has reasserted its control over Gaza since the ceasefire, and has said it will not release the second phase of hostages until Israeli forces are completely withdrawn. Meanwhile, Israel has just blown up several buildings in the West Bank. The ceasefire is on shaky ground.
  
  
• During his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing, Trump’s nominee for FBI director stated “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.” The next day, the acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General directed that eight senior FBI officials be fired if they did not resign. He also asked for a handover of the names of every FBI employee who was involved in investigating the Capitol riot.
  
  
• The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is responsible for investigating plane crashes. A lot of them received the buyout letter on Tuesday, and some accepted. Following this week’s aviation disasters, the buyout offer was retracted from the NTSB, so those investigators wouldn’t leave.
  
  

—

The remainder of today’s post is a few paragraphs about Elon Musk and his minions infiltrating the payment and communication systems of the federal government:

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a made-up group that Trump created for Elon Musk. It has no congressional oversight, no officials vetted by the Senate, and I don’t know if its people are even paid by the federal government. It’s like a shadow department, which (at best) is meant to be Trump’s advisers or (at worst) his enforcers. Trump had previously given DOGE access to the systems at the Office of Personnel Management (basically, Human Resources for the federal government), so they could do things like send the buyout emails. This did not (as far as we know) extend to allowing them to add or remove things from OPM’s systems, which should be illegal. So yesterday, when DOGE started plugging in external drives, OPM officials said no. DOGE responded by escorting the officials out of those offices and restricting their access to their own systems.

DOGE also attempted to attach drives in other departments, such as Treasury, but were successfully blocked at the time. Unfortunately, the acting Secretary of the Treasury then gave them unrestricted access yesterday afternoon. So now, DOGE are in most of the previously secure payment systems of the federal government.

What will they do? Musk has a history of posting confidential data on X, so MAGA zealots can target people more efficiently. He or DOGE could change or delete data, such as payment amounts, performance reviews, etc. — anything that’s stored electronically. They could add viruses or worms, to be invoked later. Musk essentially has the finances and primary email of the federal government by the throat, to use any way he likes (though certain actions would of course provoke an outcry like we saw when federal payments were widely frozen).

The acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury quit on Friday, after more than 30 years, after DOGE asked for access. The highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee (Ron Wyden) responded to the situation, saying that Musk’s people “may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs… To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy.”

For now, if you are in the federal government, be aware that reports say they have started adding hidden space characters to some communications. If you share these communications directly, the space characters can be used to trace them back to determine who was the leak. So, if you share information, retype it or at least cut and paste it. Don’t just resend it. The space characters may be hidden in the metadata of files and emails, where they aren’t obvious.

Trump World, day 13 (Sat., 2/1, 3 PM):

• The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ordered all references to “gender ideology” be removed across the entire federal government. This exact phrasing is important. It’s not transgender ideology they spoke of. To the far Right, “gender ideology” can mean anything not related to straight, cis gender people and possibly missionary-style sex.
  
  
• As a result, a large number of government web pages went dark yesterday. The list is long, but includes pages about gay and bisexual men, contraception, HIV, racial disparities in healthcare, risky sexual behavior among minors, building supportive environments for gender non-confirming kids, and virtually everything about transgender people or their concerns, including safe international travel info from the State Department. Even part of the Census Bureau went down.
  
  
• This adjustment in wording might (or might not) mean the federal government shall now commence coming after the rest of the letters in LGBTQIA, and not just the I and T. If a few strokes of a Sharpie can declare two absolute and arbitrary genders, a few more can declare that each one can only have sex with the other.
  
  
• The entire federal government is to require transgender people to use the bathroom, locker room, etc. corresponding to their birth sex. Apart from harming and shaming transgender people, this means people with beards and penises in the women’s spaces and people with full breasts and vaginas in the men’s spaces.
  
  
• This also means the entire American public must conform to these rules when they are in buildings run by the federal government.
  
  
• Given the foregoing, it is likely that social security records and driver’s licenses will have to be changed for transgender people, though this hasn’t officially been mandated yet. Social security is a federal system. Driver’s licenses are not, but they have to be Real ID-compliant soon for the TSA, which is federal.
  
  
• A variety of federal departments, including defense, mandated yesterday that all observances of various cultural months cease, including Pride Month, Women’s History Month, and Black History Month. For those departments, no space may be allocated to such events inside federal buildings or on government grounds, and no paid work time may be expended on them, though employees are still “permitted” (!) to participate in them in their time off. The notice sent from the Secretary of Defense was titled “Identity months dead at DoD.”
  
  
• This was happening on the same day Trump was crowing about observing Black History Month.
  
  
• Trump has already fired a bunch of officials and others who were involved in prosecuting him. I haven’t been listing them, because there are just too many. Interim leaders at the Justice Department have spent the past week drawing up lists of people (possibly thousands) whose work at the FBI has earned disfavor with Trump for a variety of reasons. Agents and analysts have been warned by bureau leadership that they may be asked to resign or face termination.
  
  
• Reports are that the EPA has sent termination notices to 1,100 employees.
  
  
• Elon Musk’s people have reportedly been caught plugging hard drives into systems in the offices of OPM, the General Services Administration, and the Treasury Department. This includes highly sensitive payment systems that control trillions of dollars paid to Americans and companies of all sorts, including: dates of birth, social security numbers, performance appraisals, home addresses, pay grades, and length of service for government employees; Social Security and Medicare benefits and their recipients; tax credits for individuals and businesses; and grants and payments to government contractors. Some of those contractors compete directly with Musk’s businesses.
  
  
• Musk’s people provided no explanations. It’s not clear if they got into Treasury, but it does appear that they got into OPM using those drives. In response to employees speaking out, Musk’s aides locked civil servants out of computer systems and offices, with reports of personal items being searched.
  
  
• After Trump baselessly blamed DEI in the FAA for the Potomac air crash, the far Right somehow concluded that a specific transgender woman (Jo Ellis of the National Guard) was to blame for piloting the helicopter, and spread this story widely on social media. She had to post a “proof of life” video to silence them.
  
  
• An arrest warrant has been issued for a New York doctor indicted on Friday by a Louisiana grand jury for allegedly prescribing abortion pills online to a pregnant underaged girl in Louisiana, which has one of the strictest near-total abortion bans in the country. They’d prefer to force a teenaged girl to give birth against her will.
  
  
• When asked if he had plans to visit the Potomac crash site, Trump replied, “What’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”
  

The image below was posted by a former head of the FBI, who Trump fired in 2017.

Trump World, day 12 (1/31, noon EST):

• The Secretary of Defense wants to use part of the new Guantanamo Bay prison camp to house the “worst of the worst” immigrant criminals. He equated it to a supermax prison.
  
  
• He is also floating the idea of sending the U.S. military into Mexico to go after drug cartels, now that Trump has designated them as terrorist organizations. To be clear, he may (or may not) be describing a limited invasion, if Mexico doesn’t give permission. “All options will be on the table… Ultimately, we will hold nothing back to secure the American people.”
  
  
• Federal employees have received another email urging them to resign, and promising them their accrued vacation time will be paid on September 30th. Part of it is written to be almost comically alluring: “You are most welcome to stay at home and relax or to travel to your dream destination. Whatever you would like."
  
  
• More employees of the federal government (including the CDC and Department of Transportation) were commanded to remove their pronouns from their email signatures by the end of the day.
  
  
• The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was directed to remove the photos and art from its walls, if that art depicted other countries. Since their entire mission is to help other countries, this has left their walls adorned with empty frames. This follows Trump freeze of funding for foreign aid (still in effect), placing a lot of USAID’s senior staff on leave when they tried to resist, and furloughing hundreds of their contractors. Trump cannot disband USAID directly, because it was approved by Congress, so he’s emptying it.
  
  
• Three of Trump’s intended appointees, especially RFK Jr., faced intense questioning at their confirmation hearings the past two days. Senate Democrats seem to have been emboldened by the widespread outrage Trump and his administration have caused this week, but even some Senate Republicans are starting to seem like they’ve had enough.
  
  
• ABC News analyzed which consumer prices are most likely to spike first in response to the tariffs that are scheduled for tomorrow. Number one is gasoline, which could increase by up to 70 cents a gallon in some parts of the country. Also high on the list are alcohol, auto parts, and certain fruits and vegetables. These increases would likely occur within a couple of weeks. By spring, with the usual seasonal bump, gas could be $1 more per gallon than it is now. This, in turn, will raise prices across the board.
  
  
• Those price increases are only what will be inflicted on Americans by our own actions. Mexico and Canada are trying to play nice, but are threatening to retaliate in kind (especially Canada), which will drive more prices up higher, faster.
  
  
• If Trump is bluffing on the tariffs, which is possible, look for him to make some sort of claims of partial success today or tomorrow to justify delaying the tariffs again. (They were originally supposed to happen last week.)
  
  
• The governor of Illinois issued a directive to prevent pardoned Capitol rioters from working for that state’s government, saying their “infamous and disgraceful conduct ... is antithetical to the mission of the State.”
  
  
• A federal judge in Massachusetts has issued a temporary restraining order, preventing one transgender woman from being transferred to a men’s prison, as well as preventing the prisons from withholding gender-related medications she has been taking since she was a teenager. Her lawyers argue that her planned handling is illegal under the 5th (discrimination in due process) and 8th (cruel and unusual punishment) amendments to the Constitution.
  
  
• CNN is reporting that transgender people applying for passport renewals with a gender change in the renewal are receiving passports with the old gender, with a letter saying that the gender in their application has been “corrected… based on our previous records.”
  
  
• A federal appeals court just struck down a law from 1968 that prevented the sale of handguns to people ages 18 to 20. Now, when you turn 18, you can buy a pistol.
  
  
• The Associated Press yesterday noted that it is possible for Trump to gut the department that oversees cybersecurity in elections, or to replace them entirely with Republican zealots. This could jeopardize or slant the security and validity of future election results.
  
  

Trump World, day 11 (1/30, 1 PM EST):

My heart goes out to the families of the victims of the tragic mid-air collision over the Potomac River last night. In deference to them, I’m uncomfortable discussing this topic today, but I have attached a couple of Trump-related crash-related news clips.

Forgive me for posting today at all, but Trump is not restrained by tragedy. If anything, history has shown that he may be more audacious when people are distracted.

• Trump has directed the Pentagon and DHS to open “migrant housing” (i.e., a prison camp) in Guantanamo Bay, to hold up to 30,000 illegal immigrants. This will allow them to be held indefinitely, without trial or the oversight common to U.S. prisons. Setting up a special prison outside the normal prison system gives a dictator an especially scary place to send people who resist and, once it’s set up, it need not house only illegal immigrants.
  
  
• About 600,000 Venezuelans are in the U.S. legally with “temporary protected status,” and were permitted to stay until October 2026. Trump just dialed this back to September 2025, so he can deport them sooner. We accepted them temporarily because Venezuela is in the throes of an economic, humanitarian, and political crisis, with many people desperate for basic necessities.
  
  
• In a preemptive move, a federal judge has already written a temporary restraining order, as requested by 22 states’ attorneys general, to be signed if Trump attempts another widespread freeze on federal payments.
  
  
• Trump is directing that K-12 public schools not receive federal funding if they teach “radical gender ideology and critical race theory.” To people on the far Right, those two terms cover almost anything related to being LGBTQIA or any skin color but white. So what this might (or might not) mean is that public schools can no longer teach about any issues or history that do not pertain to heterosexual cis Caucasians. His directive gives the Department of Education 90 days to come up with a plan to end what he calls “indoctrination.”
  
  
• DOJ Pride (an employee resource group founded in 1994 within the Department of Justice) has disbanded, following the directive to end DEI programs in the federal government.
  
  
• Similarly, a portion of the Defense Department (its internal intelligence agency) has ended observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and other cultural and historical annual events.
  
  
• The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged yesterday. Its chairman declined to answer questions about Trump’s “demand” that interest rates be lowered, except to say “The public should be confident that we will continue to do our work as we always have.” Nonetheless, Trump responded absurdly, “If the Fed had spent less time on DEI, gender ideology, ‘green’ energy, and fake climate change, Inflation would never have been a problem.”
  
  
• As he did during his first term, Trump has fired many of the most influential scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency, so he can replace them with political flunkies. Last time, this included people from oil companies and the like, who are the very people the EPA is meant to restrain.
  
  
• As expected following his declaration of a “national energy emergency” last week, the Trump administration has already approved a large number (reports say it may be thousands) of oil pipeline and similar projects, with limited or no oversight.
  
  
• U.S. Senator Mike Lee (Utah) and Rep. Thomas Massie (Kentucky) are advocating for the U.S. to withdraw from NATO.
  
  
• Earlier in the week, Rep. Rich McCormick (Georgia) justified the White House's federal aid freeze on school lunch programs by suggesting that some children could benefit more from working than receiving free meals. “You’re telling me that kids who stay at home instead of going to work at Burger King, McDonald’s… should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work? I think we need to have a top-down review.”
  
  
• Clarification: Although discrimination in employment appears to be entirely permissible now in the U.S., there are no indications so far that anything has changed with regard to sexual harassment. Discrimination and harassment are not the same thing.
  
  
• Correction: At one point in the past couple of days, I referred to this week’s sweeping federal funding directive as an executive order. That was a mistake. It was a memo.
  
  

Trump World, day 10 (1/29, 2 PM EST):

This post is unusually long. If you’re pressed for time, you can get the gist by reading the first sentence of each bullet, except for the first one. The first bullet should be read in its entirety, to avoid confusion.

• After waffling for most of the day on Tuesday, while Medicaid funds were indeed unavailable to U.S. states, Trump’s administration backpedaled and claimed that cutting off Medicaid, SNAP, and some other programs paid to individuals was a misunderstanding and a system glitch. Nonetheless, they still planned to freeze the majority of non-military federal spending. Late yesterday, a judge blocked the whole plan until Monday. This afternoon, realizing that the plan was fostering rebellion, the administration rescinded it. Most federal payments will continue, for now, though not those suspended by other executive orders.
  
  
• With an eye to those not loyal to Trump, he is offering buyouts to nearly the entire civilian federal workforce: full salary until September 30th for anyone who resigns by February 6th. This move mirrors what Elon Musk did at X in 2022. Trump wants the entire federal government to be his people, and he continues combining scare tactics and havoc to frighten others into giving him all the keys to the kingdom. Note that Elon Musk did not honor his agreement to make buyout payments to everyone who resigned from X under similar circumstances. He found an excuse to stop paying.
  
  
• As part of this gambit, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — which oversees all those employees — circulated a memo demanding various things, including that everyone return to in-office work five days a week (and possibly relocate). It read, in part, “The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, [and] trustworthy… Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward.” OPM is directing people to take the buyout if they do not agree.
  
  
• The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 federal and Washington, D.C., employees, responded: “This offer should not be viewed as voluntary.” AFGE National President Everett Kelley further stated the Trump administration's goal "is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to… The number of civil servants hasn't meaningfully changed since 1970, but there are more Americans than ever who rely on government services. Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will… cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.”
  
  
• As of now, all federally-run insurance programs are blocked from paying for any gender transition care for anyone under the age of 19. Trump is calling on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue legislation and litigation against anyone who engages in such medicine in any U.S. state, apparently without concern for who pays for it. Please remember that this is life-saving care. Trump is condemning transgender children to an incorrect puberty they cannot escape and never fully reverse, overriding their own parents and doctors. For now, such care appears to remain legal in the states where it was legal last week, but the directive is for the DoJ to work against it until it is illegal everywhere.
  
  
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is now severely hobbled. Trump fired two of its senior members, leaving the remainder as too few to reach a quorum. As reported yesterday, it continues to appear that all protections against discrimination in employment are being suspended.
  
  
• After Costco was lauded for keeping its successful DEI policies in place last week, 19 Republican states’ attorneys general have written to Costco’s CEO, accusing his company of policies they allege violate merit-based principles and federal law.
  
  
• Trump may pull funds from the TSA and Coast Guard, to get more money for deportations.
  
  
• A U.S. Space Force base in Colorado is being used to house pending deportees.
  
  
• I haven’t been reporting on this, but Trump is canceling the security people who protect former government employees Trump doesn’t like. Last week’s cancellations included the protection of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who did his level best to protect us from Trump’s mishandling of COVID-19. This week includes retired General Mark Milley who, after the January 6th Capitol riot, took secret precautions to prevent Trump from taking military action or launching a nuclear weapon to remain in power; he later called Trump “fascist to the core.” Leaving these Americans with no protection makes them vulnerable to attacks by MAGA zealots, like the ones Trump pardoned.
  
  
• Trump is planning an executive order for today that aims to make it much easier for parents to take federal funding away from public schools and instead use it to send their children to faith-based private schools.
  
  
• The U.S. will be cancelling the visas of foreign students who protested in favor of Palestine.
  
  
• The Department of Transportation is rolling back the standards for automobiles, so Americans can more easily buy vehicles that guzzle gasoline and will be less inclined to buy electric vehicles. The more gasoline we burn, the faster we destroy the environment, but the higher the price of gas and the higher the profits for corporations who sell petroleum.
  
  
• In a scathing letter Tuesday, Caroline Kennedy warned senators about her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calling him a "predator.” She wrote, “His basement, his garage, his dorm room were always the centre of the action where drugs were available and where he enjoyed showing having put baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks… It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.” She also pointed out that he had financially benefited from his earlier anti-vaccination stance (he has said, “COVID shots are a crime against humanity”), but vaccinated his own children. The letter was sent to lawmakers ahead of RFK Jr.'s confirmation hearing for the role of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Caroline Kennedy is a former U.S. ambassador to multiple countries and the last surviving daughter of President Kennedy, who she says “would be disgusted” by RFK, Jr. Despite her letter, this morning RFK Jr. entered the hearing room to a standing ovation from his supporters.
  
  
• Scientists have set the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been in its 78-year history. The Doomsday Clock is an indicator of how close scientists believe humanity is to destroying itself.
  
  
• On Monday, Fox News explored the possibility of carving Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore.
  
  

Trump World, day 9 (1 PM EST):

• All funds for federal grants and loans are frozen as of 5 PM today. This specifically excludes Medicare and Social Security. However, suspended programs include (as far as we can tell) Medicaid, SNAP, disaster assistance, LIHEAP, and virtually every other program providing assistance to people with financial need. This also suspends wider funding for education, health care, infrastructure projects (roads, bridges), research, etc. It blocks payments for grants and loans to businesses and non-profits that have already been awarded but not paid. It blocks payments providing temporary housing and job training to refugees we already accepted. None of these things are actually canceled (yet), but all the money needed for them is frozen.
  
  
• I need to give that first one a second bullet, because it is enormous and unconscionable. Read it again, and understand that it is true. With a few exceptions, everyone who has lives, businesses, programs, and efforts of any kind expecting to receive money from the U.S. government or any of its programs is being cut off today for an unknown amount of time, and possibly forever. Trillions of dollars are being blocked. If allowed to proceed as stated, this will kill people and destroy the economy. (**Update, 4:30 PM EST: Trump is backpedaling on this a little now, saying that a handful of additional programs, like Medicaid and SNAP, will remain funded. More info tomorrow.)
  
  
• Trump is floating the idea of sending Americans — U.S. citizens — who are imprisoned… he’s floating the idea of shipping them to foreign countries, too. It is not clear whether he wants to create penal colonies or send Americans to third world prisons.
  
  
• Mexico is now allowing U.S. military flights to deliver deportees, even deportees who are not from Mexico.
  
  
• The Justice Department has been instructed to stop providing legal information or aid of any sort to potential deportees. The deportation system and its laws are complex. The Justice Department used to help people who were trying to navigate it correctly.
  
  
• Reports are circulating that the Department of Labor is ending all investigations and enforcement relating to workplace discrimination. If you’re mocked or held back for being a woman or Black or gay or Muslim, that’s your problem.
  
  
• Trump is firing thousands of federal employees and contractors related to international aid programs. Some (mostly senior officials) are being fired specifically because they are resisting Trump’s destruction of decades of work.
  
  
• As it stands, large tariffs will be enacted against Mexico and Canada as soon as Saturday. As if that wasn’t bad enough for American consumers, Chrystia Freeland (who is running for prime minister in Canada) is recommending retaliatory tariffs and penalties on goods from the U.S. For 36 U.S. states, their primary export destination is Canada. About a trillion dollars of U.S. goods cross into Canada each year. The kind people to our north have had just about enough with being threatened. If we choose to attack their economy, they may attack ours.
  
  
• Given Trump’s instructions for ICE to raid schools and churches to take children without warning or paperwork, those previously safe places are having to make plans to respond. Denver public schools, for example, are being instructed that ICE must follow the law and provide judicial paperwork and advise that they are coming. “If a government official arrives at your school requesting information or entry and they are not an individual who has an appointment or business with anyone at the school, do not allow entry.” Then they are to put the school into lockdown, and communicate with ICE via the school’s intercom.
  
  
• Eggs (as an example) are expected to be at least 20% more expensive by the end of the year. Trump says consumer prices aren’t his priority.
  
  
• Trump’s executive order to remove transgender troops from the military reads, in part, that being transgender “conflicts with a [person’s] commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
  
  
• Some of the architects of Project 2025 are literally writing the memos coming from Trump and his circus.
  
  
• Google Maps will comply with renaming Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.
  
  
• Yesterday, actress Selena Gomez (third generation Mexican-American) posted an Instagram video tearfully lamenting that “All my people are getting attacked, the children. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything. I promise.” The video was viciously attacked and quickly removed.
  
  
• “‘Trans children’ should live in fear of their parents and the sick people who enable those ‘guardians.’ It’s child abuse.” — Tommy Tuberville, Senior U.S. Senator from Alabama
  
  

Trump World, day 8:

• Reports are that Trump will be signing executive orders later today banning transgender members of the military, firing more than 14,000 people. He is, however, going to offer to reinstate (with back pay) former service members who refused COVID-19 vaccines.
  
  
• (Sidebar: Various excuses are being made as to why trans service members should be banned, such as by claiming that transgender surgery typically leaves people on heavy narcotics for up to a year, and therefore unfit to serve. These claims are lies. The existing 14,000 service members are not causing significant trouble or expense, as compared to everyone else in the military. Even if someone has surgery, it is very well tolerated by most people, and no one without major complications should be out of work longer than a typical vacation. Some trans surgeries have you back at a work in a few days, and some don’t require painkillers at all after the first day.)
  
  
• Navajo citizens in the southwestern United States are frequently being asked to present proof of citizenship the past several days. They are being advised to carry government paperwork at all times, including official documention of Native American ancestry, just to be allowed to walk free.
  
  
• Columbia capitulated, and is now accepting deportee flights. They agreed to collect the deportees on their own planes, but still won’t allow the U.S. military to land there (though Trump is claiming otherwise). Columbia’s president is even sending his own presidential plane, rather than accept poor treatment of his citizens by the U.S. military.
  
  
• After public outrage, the Air Force is restoring its teaching about women pilots and Black pilots.
  
  

Trump World, day 7:

• The Justice Department is questioning whether, under Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, Native Americans are actually U.S. citizens, if they or their parents were born on sovereign tribal lands.
  
  
• The U.S. has signed a declaration joining a group of 31 other countries stating that there is “no international right to abortion.” In doing so, the U.S. joins a group of mostly oppressive countries with poor human rights records, such as Egypt, Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Uganda.
  
  
• Trump has resumed delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. (Biden had stopped supplying them to exert pressure for a ceasefire.) He is also floating the idea of removing all the surviving Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, to other countries, primarily Jordan and Egypt (though they don’t seem to be interested). He wants to “clean out” Gaza. Hamas strongly condemns this suggestion. All of this may be putting the ceasefire in jeopardy.
  
  
• Joining Mexico, Columbia is refusing to allow U.S. military flights to land in that country bringing deportees. Trump has responded with tariffs and other restrictions, though our imports from Columbia are limited. If nothing changes in this situation, consumers should expect a rise in the price of coffee.
  
  
• The Brazilian government denounced what it called the “degrading” treatment of Brazilians, who were handcuffed by their feet and hands on a repatriation flight, saying it “violates the terms of the US agreement.”
  
  
• Guatemala, however, seems all too happy to receive up to 18 flights a week.
  
  
• The Coast Guard is being tapped to fly migrants to California and Texas, so the U.S. military can deport them from there.
  
  
• The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is under fire from MAGA after issuing a statement reading, “While an emphasis on anti-trafficking is welcomed, several of the executive orders signed by President Trump this week are specifically intended to eviscerate humanitarian protections enshrined in federal law and undermine due process, subjecting vulnerable families and children to grave danger.”
  
  
• The Department of Justice website is removing all mention of the Capitol rioters. Previously, there was a large section describing the perpetrators and their crimes, along with the largest operation in DoJ history to prosecute them all.
  
  
• Some years ago, President Obama renamed America’s tallest mountain — Mount McKinley in Alaska — to its Native American “Denali.” Trump has signed an executive order returning it to Mount McKinley, though Alaskans are refusing to call it that.
  
  
• Anecdotal reports say that loyalty screenings have begun on employees of the federal government. If you post anywhere or use any social media, and you are employed by the U.S., you may want to set your accounts to private or friends-only (if they are really your friends) — assuming, of course, that you care if your overseers report you to the gestapo.
  
  
• Some federal employees are also being directed to remove their preferred pronouns from their e-mail signatures and other documents.
  
  
• Complying with Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders, the Air Force has removed a course from its basic training, which had previously taught about historically important female pilots and Black pilots, including the Tuskegee Airmen.
  
  
• Elon Musk is calling on Germany to “move beyond” Nazi guilt.
  

Clarification: Yesterday, I reported that, as things stand now, Ukraine will be cut off from “further aid.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that ALL aid will immediately stop. It is not clear which types of aid will be curtailed or how soon we will terminate what’s currently being processed, since Congress already approved a lot more weapons. All we know for certain is that military aid was still being actively received in Ukraine yesterday, per Zelenskyy.

Trump World, day 6:

• The acting head of Homeland Security signed a memo directing ICE to deport — without hearings or court appearances — 1.4 million people who were *legally* admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration. As the memo is worded, ICE can take ANYONE they want, citizens and all, and they don’t need to follow due process. Anyone. No paperwork, no hearing, just gone.
  
  
• The Secretary of State has suspended all further funding for foreign aid programs, with only a handful of exceptions. Defunded international programs include aid to Ukraine, AIDS relief, refugee assistance, and health and education programs.
  
  
• The Department of Education has canceled all investigations and rescinded all previous guidance resisting attempts to ban books in schools.
  
  
• You can no longer change the gender marker on your passport. If you have a penis or vagina that wasn’t indicated on your birth certificate, you will be forced to get a passport that says you have the other.
  
  
• Trump is considering an executive order “getting rid of” FEMA.
  
  
• Target is rolling back its DEI programs, following the lead of Wal-Mart and McDonalds.
  
  
• On Thursday, Mexico refused to provide landing rights to a military transport plan carrying deportees from the U.S. The plane never took off. (You cannot land a military transport plane in another country without that country’s permission.)
  
  
• 50 of 53 Senate Republicans (plus JD Vance’s tiebreaker) approved Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, despite his limited military experience and numerous allegations of alcohol abuse and multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including Hegseth himself admitting to paying someone $50,000 to remain silent about a sexual relationship.
  
  
• There are various inspectors general in the federal government, who are expected to provide non-partisan oversight of the government’s operations. Last night, Trump fired 17 of them, without the 30 days of notice to Congress that is required by law.
  
  
• At an inauguration rally, Elon Musk was seen giving a Nazi-style salute to the crowd. When they applauded, he did it again. This has prompted various social media venues, notably subreddits, to now ban links to content on X (formerly Twitter, which Musk owns).
  
  
• Rep. Lauren Boebert was seen running in and out of a women’s restroom at the Capitol, yelling that there was a man inside. (She was trying to hurt transgender Rep. Sarah McBride.) She complained to security. She fetched Nancy Mace. A small crowd gathered. But Sarah McBride wasn’t there, just cis women. Boebert apologized for the “mistaken identity.”
  
  
• Two of the Capitol rioters pardoned by Trump have refused the pardons. They recognize that what they did was wrong, they’re contrite, and they feel like accepting the pardons would be a slap in the face to Capitol police.
  
  

Trump World, day 5 … of 2,923?

• Representative Andy Ogles, Republican of Tennessee, has filed a resolution to amend the constitutional term limit for presidents from two terms to three, though only if a president’s first two terms were non-consecutive.
  
  
• Military transport planes have begun shipping unwanted people from the United States to… wherever.
  
  
• Trump has threatened tough tariffs against Russia if the Ukraine war doesn’t end. This sounds like a positive move, but it’s actually a meaningless threat, since the U.S. already has severe sanctions in place against Russian goods, with basically nothing left to leverage.
  
  
• On the subject of Zelenskyy and Ukraine fighting back against Russia’s invasion, Trump said “He shouldn’t have done that. We could’ve made a deal.” (Trump did not offer to broker any sort of deal when Russia attacked.)
  
  
• Among the numerous federal initiatives and processes that are currently suspended, the CDC is being blocked from issuing its usual reports and alerts (including updates about bird flu), and the FDA is being prevented from moving forward with its plan to ban formaldehyde in hair care products.
  
  
• A member of the state senate in Mississippi has introduced the Contraception Begins At Erection Act, which would make it unlawful for "a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo."
  
  
• The new Department of Government Efficiency (under Elon Musk) is considering removing pennies from American currency, since one penny costs 3.7 cents to make. This seems sensible, but how much will it cost businesses and consumers to retool everything, so that every price, tip, and tax ends with a zero or a five?
  
  
• Trump recently invested a lot of money in cryptocurrency, including creating Trump-branded meme coins. Now Trump has announced he’s considering creating a national stockpile of digital currency. Unlike gold, cryptocurrency has absolutely no innate value, but if the U.S. buys a bunch of it (at taxpayer expense), Trump’s own holdings will become more valuable.
  
  
• Trump says he will “demand” lower interest rates. This is posturing. He has no power to demand that banks listen to him. Their interest rates are driven by overall market forces that Trump cannot control.
  
  
• Some defiant finance industry leaders, including JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have come out in the past couple of days patently refusing to rollback their DEI initiatives.
  
  
• Also bucking the general trend of large corporations sucking up to Trump this week is Costco, whose board of directors unanimously and successfully explained their DEI programs to the holders of 98% of its voting shares.
  
  

Trump World, day 4:

• The White House web site has removed its pages about the Constitution, including the actual text of the Constitution itself. The site has also deleted its pages about women’s reproductive rights.
  
  
• The State Department’s web pages promoting LGBTQ rights worldwide have been removed.
  
  
• Workplace protections for all minorities have been revoked throughout the federal workforce.
  
  
• The Trump administration warned federal employees of “adverse consequences” for not reporting colleagues resisting orders to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, giving a 10-day deadline to report via a special email account.
  
  
• Trump today pardoned a number of anti-abortion activists, including some who had blockaded clinic entrances.
  
  
• Trump is threatening to withhold federal aid to the wildfire victims around Los Angeles, unless California changes its rules around water, such as by revoking fish conservation efforts. He wants to change FEMA in general, saying “it’s getting in the way of everything.”
  
  
• “We have truth on our side at this White House… This man is already doing more in less than 24 hours than his predecessor did in four years.” — Karoline Leavitt, new White House press secretary
  
  

Trump World, day 3 of 1,462:

• The Justice Department has been directed to prosecute state and local officials who fail to comply with all of Trump’s new immigrant-related policies, including deportation of local residents.
  
  
• Immigration agents are now permitted to raid schools and churches, to seize children.
  
  
• Thousands of refugees who were already cleared to resettle legally in the U.S. — who already had full permission and travel plans — have had their permissions and plans suspended. This includes 1,600 Afghans fleeing from the Taliban, many of whom are fleeing because they previously helped U.S. soldiers.
  
  
• Trump has cancelled Biden’s sanctions against expansionist Israelis committing acts of violence in the West Bank.
  
  
• Trump is considering whether to “turn off the tap” in providing weapons to Ukraine.
  
  
• Many federal health agencies have been temporarily gagged, and are currently forbidden to communicate any new information to the public via any means.
  
  
• Trump has declared a national emergency for energy production, even though the U.S. produced more energy in 2024 than in any previous year. This allows him to approve new drilling and power plant projects, while ignoring existing conservation laws.
  
  
• Trump is planning February 1st tariffs on goods from China, and future tariffs on goods from the European Union. As with his upcoming tariffs against Canada and Mexico, this will further increase grocery and other prices.
  
  
• Biden’s executive order reducing prescription drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid recipients has been revoked.
  
  
• The Spanish language versions of the White House site and social media pages have been shut down. The site was initially replaced by a page with a button labeled “Go Home” that linked to a video montage of Trump campaigning.
  
  
• During the inauguration prayer service. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, DC asked the president to “have mercy.” Trump has requested an apology and responded on Truth Social with:
  
  “The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
  
  I found her words eloquent and suitably respectful, and very much in need of being said. However, you can decide for yourself. Here’s a video.
  
  

Trump World, day 2:

• The United States is withdrawing from the World Health Organization.
  
  
• Being born in the United States no longer automatically makes you a citizen, unless your parents were. 18 states’ attorneys general are filing a lawsuit stating that this violates the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
  
  
• It appears that all U.S. government agencies and web sites are to be stripped of all personnel and information related to climate change, diversity, and inclusion.
  
  
• Restrictions that were created to limit AI use to reduce the risks have been removed. Instead, artificial intelligence may now proceed unchecked, and Trump is announcing investments worth up to half a trillion dollars in AI infrastructure projects.
  
  
• Transgender women (including those with vaginas) in federal prisons are to be moved to men’s prisons. Likewise, all trans women in federally-funded shelters for migrants and shelters for rape victims are to be housed with the men.
  
  
• Persons already traveling abroad with an X gender marker on their passports may not be allowed back into the United States, and may instead be held in custody without trial, until they can procure a passport with a male or female designation.
  
  
• Tariffs against Canada and Mexico, which will raise grocery and other prices even higher, are planned for February 1st.
  
  
• Having recently called January 6th 2021 “a day of love and peace,” Trump pardoned all 1,500 Capitol rioters, describing them as “hostages.” This includes violent offenders who were recorded striking police with metal batons, baseball bats, a flagpole, and a fire extinguisher.
  
  
• “This is a hell of a start to a run.” — JD Vance speaking truthfully, yesterday
  
  

Trump World, day 1:

• The U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate accords.
  
  
• People with appointments at the southern border to seek asylum for humanitarian reasons had those appointments all canceled without warning, and the scheduling software has been shut down.
  
  
• Federal funds may not be used for any program that acknowledges someone as transgender. This presumably includes federally-funded medical insurance no longer covering necessary medications or anything else.
  
  
• Passports and other federal documents may no longer list non-binary or X. Only male or female are allowed.
  
  
• The United States is, in fact, going to attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
  
  

Trump World, day -1:

Alabama and Mississippi will also honor Robert E. Lee on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.