February 8, 2025

Melania and Ivanka liked USAID not so long ago

Stupid Trump stuff

X.com - The Pentagon just announced that it would double the number of news organizations removed from physical offices to make room for MAGA propaganda media outlets. 

 OUT: The New York Times, Politico, NPR, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, The Hill, The War Zone 

IN: Breitbart, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, OAN, Newsmax, HuffPost, The Free Press, The Daily Caller

Trump halts aid to South Africa, claiming discrimination against Afrikaners

Evangelist Paula White has been named by #Trump as Head of the White House Faith Office.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), suggested that The Wall Street Journal reporter responsible for uncovering a DOGE employee’s racist tweets should be fired on Friday.

Robert Reich -  DOGE is reportedly threatening NOAA with massive staff and budget cuts.NOAA houses the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, which produce forecasts and warn people about storms. This attack on public safety is ripped straight from the pages of Project 2025. 

Variety -  President Trump has declared his intention to take over the leadership of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. D.C. After The Atlantic first reported the news, Trump confirmed his plans in a Friday evening Truth Social post, writing, “At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

Trump went on to declare that he would instate himself as chairman of the newly-formed board. “We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” Current chairman David Rubenstein was set to hold the position through 2026.

Wonkette - The latest salvo in Trump’s battle against humanity and common decency is against the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, of all damn things. On Thursday night, reports broke that the Department of Justice told NCMEC that it would lose its federal funding if it didn’t scrub all mention of LGBTQIA+ children from all of its public materials.   

Three states sue Trump for attack on gender-affirming care for minors

USA Today - President Donald Trump has moved to fire Ellen Weintraub, chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, but she says her termination is invalid and is refusing to step down. Weintraub, one of three Democrats on the six-member bipartisan panel, posted a letter dated Jan. 31 from Trump that she received Thursday informing her "you are hereby removed" as a member of the FEC commission "effective immediately."

"There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn’t it," Weintraub wrote on X. "I’ve been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon." 

Donald Trump revokes Joe Biden’s security clearance in latest revenge move 

About 1,100 employees were told they could be terminated at the Environmental Protection Agency, and 168 staffers were put on leave. 

Trump’s USAID freeze puts millions of women and girls at risk, experts warn

Elon Musk says a DOGE staffer who resigned for racist X posts will be brought back


Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team

NY Times - A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”The Trump administration’s new policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain highly sensitive information such as bank details, heightens the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in an emergency order.

Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who had been granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to those categories of officials.

 

Meanwhile. . .

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

$1.39B: The amount Americans are expected to legally wager on Super Bowl LIX.

50 cents: The new surcharge for every egg ordered at Waffle House.


Who benefits from USAID in just one state

Via Lowdown

 

Nom-violent protests work bertter than violent ones

David Robson, BBC, 2019 -Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. 

In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.

In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance

In each case, civil resistance by ordinary members of the public trumped the political elite to achieve radical change.

There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.

Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.

In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance

In each case, civil resistance by ordinary members of the public trumped the political elite to achieve radical change.

There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way....

Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change...

Chenoweth admits that when she first began her research in the mid-2000s, she was initially rather cynical of the idea that nonviolent actions could be more powerful than armed conflict in most situations. As a PhD student at the University of Colorado, she had spent years studying the factors contributing to the rise of terrorism when she was asked to attend an academic workshop organised by the International Center of Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), a non-profit organisation based in Washington DC. The workshop presented many compelling examples of peaceful protests bringing about lasting political change – including, for instance, the People Power protests in the Philippines...

But Chenoweth was surprised to find that no-one had comprehensively compared the success rates of nonviolent versus violent protests; perhaps the case studies were simply chosen through some kind of confirmation bias. “I was really motivated by some scepticism that nonviolent resistance could be an effective method for achieving major transformations in society,” she says

“We were trying to apply a pretty hard test to nonviolent resistance as a strategy,” Chenoweth says. (The criteria were so strict that India’s independence movement was not considered as evidence in favour of nonviolent protest in Chenoweth and Stephan’s analysis – since Britain’s dwindling military resources were considered to have been a deciding factor, even if the protests themselves were also a huge influence.)By the end of this process, they had collected data from 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns. And their results – which were published in their book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict – were striking.

Overall, nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns: they led to political change 53% of the time compared to 26% for the violent protests.  



Third of New York Times digital subscribers aren't there for the news

Press Gazette, UK - Almost a third of New York Times digital subscribers now exclusively subscribe to one of its non-news products, its annual report shows. In its full-year results for 2024 The New York Times Company reported ending the year with 10.8 million digital subscribers — an increase of 1.1 million compared with the end of 2023.

Of those 10.8 million subscribers, 3.5 million (or 32%) subscribed only to either its Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, Audio or The Athletic products.

Another 1.9 million had a conventional news-only digital subscription that provides access past the nytimes.com paywall and a further 5.4 million had either an “All Access” bundled subscription, which buys access to all the Times’ products, or some other mix of NYT subscriptions.


A refresher course on the Constitution and the Laws of the Universe

 Robert Hubbell

With the above firmly in mind, it is clear that Musk and Trump's “cutting” spending in various agencies violates Articles I and II of the Constitution, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and the founding principle of separation of powers.

The “cuts” that Musk and Trump are imposing through computer hacking relate to funds that Congress has already appropriated—and which must be “duly executed” by the president. If Musk and Trump want to effectuate future cuts to budgets, they must convince Congress to pass an appropriations bill that makes such cuts.

Congressional Republicans have sat on their hands as Musk and Trump have overridden Congress's Article I powers based on the vague excuse of “fraud,” which has never been specifically identified. Even if fraud exists, the remedy is not to override Congress’s role in the Constitution—it is to report the fraud to the DOJ for criminal prosecution and to Congress for remedial legislation.

Musk and Trump's unlawful actions go far beyond unauthorized “cuts” accomplished by computer hacking; they extend to the extinguishment of entire agencies and departments created and funded by Congress under the authority of Article I of the Constitution.

So, the “cuts” and “closures” are not merely “controversial,” or “disputed,” or “illegal.” They overthrow the constitutional order and separation of powers by claiming that the president exercises the authority granted to Congress in Article I of the Constitution.

That is a coup. There is no other word for it.

Black population stats

 Pew Research has done a thorough review of black stats in America. A few excerpts:

The number of Black people living in the United States reached a new high of 48.3 million in 2023. That’s up a third (33%) since 2000, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. This group is diverse, with an increasing number who say they are of two or more races.

For Black History Month, here are key facts about the nation’s Black population. In this analysis, the population includes three main groups: single-race, non-Hispanic Black people; non-Hispanic, multiracial Black people; and Black Hispanics. (The Black Hispanic population is not the same as the Afro-Latino population.) You can also read our updated fact sheet about Black Americans.

The Black population in the U.S. has grown by a third since 2000, from 36.2 million then to 48.3 million in 2023. Notably, the number of people who identify as another race in addition to Black has increased 269%, and the number who say they are Hispanic has risen by 210%. This increase in racial diversity among Black Americans reflects a broader national shift in the number of Americans identifying as multiracial. At the same time, the arrival of new immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere has been an important contributor to Black population growth. (Read the cautionary note in “How we did this” about total and immigrant population estimates.)  

The Black population has grown fastest in states that historically have not had many Black residents. Utah experienced the fastest growth in its Black population between 2010 and 2023, with an increase of 89%. The Black populations of Arizona, Nevada and Minnesota each increased by 60% during that span, the next-fastest growth rates among states with Black populations of at least 25,000 in 2010. MORE


Trump is a solipsist, not a narcissist

 John R MacArthur, The Guardian - The investigative psychiatrist Robert J Lifton once explained to me that Trump is a solipsist, as distinct from the narcissist that he’s often accused of being.

A narcissist, while deeply self-infatuated, nevertheless seeks the approval of others and will occasionally attempt seduction to get what he wants (I think of the French president, Emmanuel Macron). For Trump the solipsist, the only point of reference is himself, so he makes no attempt even at faking interest in other people, since he can’t really see them from his self-centered position.

Trump’s absence of external connection is self-evident: his treatment of the “other” – from his own family to his tenants, his political rivals, the victims of the Los Angeles fires or the displaced people of Gaza – displays not only a lack of empathy, but also an emotional blindness. How else could he tease out loud about dating his own daughter, Ivanka? How else could he so cruelly insult former president Biden in his inauguration address, with Biden seated just a short distance away?  More


 California governor signs in to law $50m to challenge Trump immigration plans

Courts take on Trump

Jen Psaki, MSNBC - President Donald Trump’s second term has been defined by a flood of executive orders — many of them legally questionable. And for now, the courts are emerging as one of the few institutions able to potentially check his most extreme policies.

This week, a second federal court issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, a rebuke of his immigration agenda. Notably, the ruling came from U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a President Ronald Reagan appointee, who didn’t mince words:

 

"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."

 

The courts will not be able to stop every Trump policy. But with Democrats in the minority in both chambers of Congress, lawsuits are one clear way to challenge Trump’s agenda.


Where the courts have already blocked Trump:

 Major incoming lawsuits: 

  • The AFL-CIO has sued to block Elon Musk’s DOGE employees from accessing sensitive personal data of seniors stored by the Department of Labor.
  • Higher education groups are suing the Trump administration over its executive orders to eliminate DEI positions.

The legal battles against Trump are beginning, and while not every case will go in Democrats’ favor, the judiciary is currently one of the few checks on Trump’s power — and one worth watching closely.  Read more exclusive insights from Jen Psaki here. 

19 States Sue Trump To Block Musk's DOGE From Accessing Personal Data

 

February 7, 2025

Health

Newsweek - Texas has removed millions of residents from health-care programs as part of a national "unwinding" process that began after the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency. According to new data from health policy research non-profit the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), Texas leads the nation in Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) disenrollments, with over 1.7 million people having had their coverage terminated between March 2023 and October 2024.

While some individuals may transition to employer-sponsored plans or the Affordable Care Act marketplace, health advocates have warned that many—especially children and low-income families—could be deprived of insurance altogether.

The high level of post-pandemic disenrollments raises concerns about health-care coverage gaps for America's more vulnerable populations.

NPR - Many people are getting sick due to a winter stew of respiratory viruses — flu, COVID and more. A couple of unusual trends are driving all the coughing, sneezing and fevers this year. People are still getting COVID-19, and some even end up in the hospital. But this winter’s COVID-19 surge appears to be the mildest since the virus emerged, NPR’s Rob Stein says. The flu season started unusually early and has been intense. A second winter surge of the flu appears to be on the way. It’s a mystery why this is happening, but it could be the kind of natural variation that happens with the flu.

How climate change is hurting US communities

 Stateline - Natural disasters are worsening the U.S. housing crisis, upending the home insurance market, and reducing housing options — particularly for lower-income residents. And that trend will likely grow as disasters become more frequent and severe.

Climate change, experts warn, is the world’s fastest-growing driver of homelessness, displacing millions of people annually. In 2022 alone, disasters forced 32.6 million people worldwide from their homes, according to a 2023 report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

If trends continue, 1.2 billion people globally could be displaced due to disasters by 2050, according to the international think tank Institute for Economics & Peace.

The consequences are already playing out.

After the 2023 Maui wildfires, homelessness in Hawaii rose by 87%. With Los Angeles’ fires destroying about six times as many homes, experts predict that California’s homeless population will surge dramatically in 2025....

According to the Migration Policy Institute, 3.2 million U.S. adults were displaced or evacuated because of natural disasters in 2022, with more than 500,000 still unable to return home by the end of the year.


Trump adds paper straws to his hate list

 Newsweek - President Donald Trump announced that he will sign an executive order ending the push for paper straws. "I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don't work," Trump posted on Truth Social. "BACK TO PLASTIC!"

In November 2024, former President Joe Biden announced a national strategy to prevent plastic pollution. Biden supported efforts to reduce the use of plastic, including plastic straws, as a focus on shifting to more sustainable materials. This was a step toward lowering the country's dependency on single-use plastics.


Word

 Senator Amy Klobuchar: "What is the difference between Greenland and Donald Trump? Greenland is not for sale…"

A proven constraint on oligarchy and autocracy

 Contrarian - There’s a reason that taking out unions is one of the first pages in the oligarchic coup playbook – as in Chile, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Indonesia, Spain, Myanmar, and more. It’s the same reason Trump has fired the first Black woman member of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox—clearly violating labor law and denying the board the quorum it needs to conduct business and protect employee rights; fired two commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and asserted in an executive order that he can fire any member of the Senior Executive Service, which includes regional directors at the NLRB who run union elections and investigate and decide whether to prosecute corporations’ unfair labor practices.

It’s the same reason that Project 2025, which has informed the lion’s share of Trump’s early shock-and-awe actions in office, would effectively dismantle union power nationwide by banning public sector unions, eliminating overtime protections, and making collective organization nearly impossible.

And it’s the same reason Musk—who wants to make the entire NLRB unconstitutional and whose companies have been fined for millions of dollars for labor or workplace safety violations—is reportedly targeting the Department of Labor for the next round of DOGE sabotage. (Of course, Musk’s aims are twofold: defending his coup, and his very real interests in protecting Tesla and Space X from ongoing investigations into their anti-worker efforts.)

And it’s the same reason corporations and billionaires spent decades working to decimate union power in the United States. The reason is: Oligarchs know politics is about power, and they know strong unions don’t just deliver better wages and benefits for their members (though they do that in spades). Unions also build the kind of real democratic power—for all of us, not just union members—that keeps oligarchs in check.  More

 

Trump Mulling Sending American Convicts To Other Countries for Fee

WhoWhatWhy  -  President Donald Trump said last week he wants to send American convicts — especially ‘animals’ and violent repeat offenders − to foreign prisons, saying there are ‘many’ countries willing to take them for a small fee. … Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as ‘very generous’ an offer by El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house violent U.S. convicts in his country’s jails. The State Department describes prison conditions in El Salvador as ‘harsh and dangerous.’

Federal judge named by Reagan goes after Trump's birthright citizen attack

Occupy Democrats -   A federal judge delivers a crushing defeat to Donald Trump's attempt to illegally end birthright citizenship in the United States — and then tears into him for trying to shred the Constitution. The fascist MAGA power grab has hit a brick wall... 

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle labeled Trump's Executive Order to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional and extended a temporary hold on the policy. Even Coughenour — a judge who was appointed by the far-right conservative President Ronald Reagan — had to draw a line in the sand on this one. "It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals," said the judge. "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," he added....

Unfortunately for Trump and the racists in his MAGA movement, the 14th Amendment leaves no ambiguity on the matter, stating: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." 

 "Birthright citizenship is a fundamental constitutional right. The 14th Amendment secures the blessings of liberty to our posterity by bestowing on all those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, the rights of citizenship," said Coughenour. "The fact that the government has cloaked what is effectively a constitutional amendment under the guise of an executive order is equally unconstitutional," he continued. "If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself. That’s how our Constitution works, and that’s how the rule of law works, because the president’s order attempts to circumscribe this process. It is clearly unconstitutional," he added.

How dictators get started

 Hartmann Report - Trump wants FBI agents who investigated his coup attempt, his facilitating espionage, or his other financial and criminal activities fired.

Let’s be very clear: this is how dictatorships start.

A guy who wants to be a dictator always begins by changing how the government works. Even though the majority of the nation had agreed previously that the government should do certain things in certain ways, he reassures everybody he’s got a better way and it’ll all work out.

In the process, he breaks a bunch of laws, but people mostly shrug because they don’t directly affect them. Pastor Niemöller wrote about this in 1930s Germany; to paraphrase: First they came for the government workers…

Then people start resisting, which is when he begins to use the police power of the state. The people who show up in the streets, the people who speak out in the media, the people who try to fight him in the legislatures and the courts: he figures out ways to get them fired, harassed, and ultimately imprisoned.


Trump taps televangelist to run new White House 'faith' office

 Daily Kos - Christian nationalism is in full swing after Donald Trump’s Thursday announcement of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias,” as well as a new White House Faith Office led by right-wing televangelist and Trump spiritual adviser Paula White.

The president made the announcement at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., where he claimed without any evidence that Christians are under attack in the United States—and that he will save them.

"The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI, terrible, and other agencies," Trump said. "In addition, the task force will work to fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide."

Trump added, “While I’m in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares. And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God.”

Far from being a persecuted minority, Christians are the largest religious group in the United States, with 68% of Americans identifying as Christian, according to Gallup data from March. And as for actual religious persecution, it's actually Jews—who make up just 2% of the population—who faced the vast majority of hate crimes in 2023, according to data from the Department of Justice.

Christians overwhelmingly backed Trump in the 2024 election, with 63% of Protestants and other Christian denominations and 59% of Catholics supporting Trump, according to exit poll data.