January 24, 2025

Trump's Power Grab

When you’re the president, they let you do it.

IN THE FIRST THREE DAYS OF HIS SECOND TERM, President Donald J. Trump has signed a tsunami of executive orders and proclamations revoking Biden-era policies and forging frighteningly aggressive new ones. They span a range of issues that the Constitution largely puts in the hands of Congress—energy and the climate, immigration, affirmative action, LGBTQ+ rights, police brutality, private prisons, civil servants, terrorism, health, and domestic military deployment—not to mention a reprieve for TikTok, security clearances granted with no vetting, and pardons and commutations for the January 6th convicts and defendants.

It will take weeks to work through the legal and policy implications of all these executive actions. The Trump team’s obvious strategy is to so overwhelm litigants, the media, the public, Congress, and the courts that nobody really has a handle on the entirety of what’s hitting us.

One thing is already clear, though: Trump is blatantly violating established federal law, knowing that there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Trump is the law now.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-power-grab-executive-orders-birthright-citizenship-tiktok-constitution

The Shock Doctrine is now underway here.

January 24, 2025

Garsh! That's Goofy: Florida tax dollars pay for voucher students' Disney trips.

I knew the ongoing dismantling of public education in Florida had accelerated to new levels of audacity but I failed to notice that it included using taxpayer dollars to pay for theme park visits for kids who opt out of public schools.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Florida’s expanded voucher programs now strip about $3.9 billion a year from what used to be money dedicated to public schools. Public schools now only get 77% (and shrinking by the year) of the state education pie. The rest goes to two statewide voucher programs for kids being educated in private, religious and home schools.

So called “school choice” started in Florida as an alternative for the poorest of kids already enrolled in underperforming public schools. But today, money that had formerly gone to public schools pays for more than 500,000 “scholarships” vouchers to private schools and home-schooling parents without any consideration for income limits or prior enrollment in public school for the child.

About 70% of the Florida kids getting voucher money through the state had never been educated in a public school in the state, a new report from the Florida Policy Institute estimated.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2025/01/23/florida-school-vouchers-fund-disney-trips/77877899007/

January 23, 2025

Costco won't join DEI backlash. Why shareholders rejected anti-'woke' proposal.

Costco shareholders voted down an investor proposal from a conservative think tank that urged management to investigate the business risks of its diversity initiatives.

More than 98% of shares voted against the proposal, according to preliminary results announced by Costco chairman Hamilton “Tony” James. He and other board members had asked shareholders to reject the proposal involving the company's diversity, equity and inclusion policies ahead of Thursday's annual meeting.

"We owe our success to the more than 300,000 employees who serve our members every day. It is important that they all feel included and appreciated and that they transmit these values to our customers," James said.

Ethan Peck from the National Center for Public Policy Research – the right-leaning shareholder advocacy group that submitted the proposal – argued in a prerecorded message that DEI is "illegal, immoral and detrimental to shareholder value" and poses litigation risks for the company.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-wont-join-dei-backlash-232816912.html

January 23, 2025

Trump says he will demand lower interest rates immediately

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would demand that interest rates drop immediately, and that other countries should follow suit.

"With oil prices going down, I'll demand that interest rates drop immediately, and likewise they should be dropping all over the world," Trump told the World Economic Forum on Thursday in Davos, Switzerland.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-demand-lower-interest-163214070.html

King Canute demands the tide recede...

January 23, 2025

Trump's anger toward World Health Organization may reshape global health, politics

Public health experts say the United States’ departure could cripple the WHO’s operations or leave an opening for China to assume greater control over the agency.

For five years, Donald Trump has blamed an arm of the United Nations for fueling the coronavirus pandemic that helped end his first presidency.

“The World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves, because they’re like the public relations agency for China,” Trump seethed in April 2020, alleging that the WHO helped cover up the origins and spread of the virus. One month later, Trump announced that the United States would become the first nation to withdraw from the preeminent global health alliance — a decision that his successor, Joe Biden, reversed when he took office in January 2021.

Now Trump is again pulling out of the WHO, signing an executive order Monday that immediately terminates America’s commitment to the organization. The decision has alarmed WHO allies, who dispute Trump’s characterization and say that the global health group worked diligently to combat an unprecedented threat. WHO leaders also insist that there is time to negotiate the U.S. departure, pointing to a one-year formal process to withdraw from the organization.

“We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue,” the WHO said in a statement.

But after years of grievances, including his complaints over the cost of participating, it is not clear that Trump can be persuaded to rejoin the WHO. Public health experts say the nation’s departure could cripple the WHO’s operations — the United States is responsible for nearly 20 percent of its funding — or leave an opening for China to assume greater control over the agency that helps coordinate the response to international health crises.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/23/trump-world-health-organization/

Making America great by ceding influence and control of international organizations to China...

January 22, 2025

Far-Right Leaders Granted Clemency by Trump Express Desire for Retribution

Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers asserted that they wanted President Trump to seek revenge on their behalf for being prosecuted in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.

Fresh from being freed by President Trump’s sweeping grants of clemency, two of the nation’s most notorious far-right leaders — Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers militia — spoke out this week.

While the men avoided any declarations about the future of their battered organizations, they asserted unrepentantly that they wanted Mr. Trump to seek revenge on their behalf for being prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Before Mr. Trump offered them a reprieve on Monday night, both men had been serving lengthy prison terms — Mr. Tarrio 22 years and Mr. Rhodes 18 years — on seditious conspiracy convictions arising from the roles they played in the storming of the Capitol. The charges they faced and the punishment they got were among the most serious imposed against any of the nearly 1,600 people prosecuted in connection with Jan. 6.

Perhaps for that reason, their remarks, made to largely friendly audiences, were couched in a tone of cautious belligerence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/politics/enrique-tarrio-stewart-rhodes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rE4.GTK6.tqmDwimDBlUG&smid=url-share

January 22, 2025

Inside the Bakersfield raids that showed how Trump's immigration policies will sow chaos

On Jan. 7, the phones of immigration advocates in Bakersfield began lighting up with calls from immigrant farmworkers. The messages said the U.S. Border Patrol was conducting an indiscriminate dragnet in the area, pulling over vehicles presumed to be carrying immigrants to work and taking dozens into custody.

To the advocates, this didn’t seem right. The Border Patrol — a unit of U.S. Customs and Border Protection — had not been seen operating in anyone’s memory in Bakersfield, some 300 miles from the patrol’s California offices in El Centro, a few miles from the Mexican border.

Although there are two detention centers in Bakersfield run by ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — none of the detainees could be found in either one. The Border Patrol, a sister agency of ICE, staged its raids not at ICE installations, but out of a parking lot at a facility of the Interior Department, which has nothing to do with immigration or border security.

The Border Patrol eventually asserted that it had conducted a four-day “targeted enforcement” operation aimed at undocumented immigrants with criminal records, ultimately detaining 78 individuals mostly for crimes such as drug trafficking, burglary and child abuse.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-01-22/column-inside-the-bakersfield-raids-that-showed-how-trumps-immigration-policies-will-sow-chaos

January 22, 2025

Trump pledges unity in inaugural address by immediately attacking fellow Americans

The longtime con artist – convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records – stood in the Capitol rotunda and inaccurately claimed: 'The golden age of America begins right now.'

An elderly and unpopular felon who narrowly won the popular vote in the 2024 election was sworn in as president of the United States in a tiny ceremony Monday, held indoors because it was slightly chilly outside.

Donald J. Trump, who refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power when he last left office and fomented a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol for which he was never held accountable, swore to protect America from enemies, foreign and domestic, while somehow managing to not laugh at the suckers who just returned him to power.

Wholly disregarding nearly half of American voters who strongly opposed and feared his candidacy, Trump harnessed the power of unbridled narcissism to keep a straight face while hilariously saying: "For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is liberation day."

The inauguration ceremony was held indoors because it was in the mid-20s in Washington, D.C., and they apparently don’t make dress mittens for Trump’s peculiarly small hands.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/01/20/trump-inauguration-speech-unpopular-president/77837047007/

January 22, 2025

Trump signs executive order pausing wind turbine leases, could impact Midwest

President Donald Trump on Monday made good his promise to create policy "where no windmills are being built."

The executive order he signed Monday temporarily halts offshore wind energy lease sales in federal waters and pauses approvals, permits and loans for both offshore and onshore wind.

During the pause, officials will review the environmental impact of both onshore and offshore wind projects on wildlife and consider the "economic costs associated with intermittent generation" and the effects of subsidies on the viability of the wind energy industry, according to the executive order.

Land-based wind turbines currently produce 10% of the United State's electricity, according to American Clean Power, an industry group. The vast majority of those are built on private land.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/01/21/trump-executive-order-wind-turbine-offshore-projects/77848624007/

January 22, 2025

Of fish and men: Trump's California water order takes aim at Newsom and troubled smelt

In an apparent poke at California politics, one of President Donald Trump's executive orders on Monday directed federal agencies “to route more water" from across the state instead of trying to protect a nearly extinct tiny fish species.

Experts say the state's water flow has been complex for more than four decades, and the president's mandate might be considered a bit fishy as he tries to keep a longstanding campaign promise.

In the executive order titled “Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California,” Trump mandated water from Northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, one of the state's main water sources, to be redirected south. It's an attempt to change the environmental protections of the smelt, a three-inch-long fish once vital to California's ecosystem but now nearly extinct, and criticize the state's efforts while battling raging and deadly wildfires that have wreaked havoc across greater Los Angeles.

The executive order comes after Trump initially promised in 2016 to redirect California’s water runoff south to help farmers and growers in Central Valley. In 2020, then-President Trump issued a federal memorandum to redirect millions of gallons of water. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom successfully sued in federal court to limit the flow from the Delta.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/21/trump-water-california-fish-newsom/77848777007/