This batch of links keeps growing, as I update (3-7-25)
• The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out. (Michael Schaffer, Politico, 11-15-24)
I quote: The first Trump administration sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much. Trump returns to office with far more radical ambitions than he had in 2016, and much more coherent plans for achieving them. If you’re against gutting environmental regulations, bulk-firing public servants, doing away with Obamacare or instituting mass deportations, public fury is a way to push back — or at least stiffen the spines of Democrats who might collaborate with the administration. The left will have to wait for actual presidential deeds to drive the backlash. For better or worse, those will happen soon enough.
Thank you, Sherilynn Ifill for suggesting we think about these issues:
• Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? (Sherilynn Ifill, Sherrilyn’s Newsletter, 2-9-25)
Read her piece, for an articulate call to action, which links to some of the the following checkmarks on Trump's-damage-to-do list.
• DOGE redefines ‘fraud’ to defend cutting federal employees, programs (Dan Diamond and Faiz Siddiqui, WaPo 3-7-25) Outside watchdogs and analysts say Trump and Musk are using overly broad claims of fraud to build political support for their plans. Among the alleged fraudsters targeted by the Trump administration: foreign-aid programs such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, clean-energy groups that received funding from the Biden administration, and organizations that specialize in diversity initiatives.
• Federal judge blocks DOGE from accessing sensitive U.S. Treasury Department material (NPR, 2-8-25) A federal judge early Saturday blocked Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans. The case, filed in federal court in New York City, alleges the Trump administration allowed Musk's team access to the Treasury Department's central payment system in violation of federal law.
---The biggest Ponzi scheme in history (Robert Reich, 3-6-25) In response to Elon Musk’s comment that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” Reich argues, "If you want to see a real Ponzi scheme, look no further than the crypto investments Musk and Trump have hyped."
• Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions (Just Security)
The Tracker is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions.
• Judge pauses Trump order to put USAID employees on administrative leave (Fatma Tanis, Shannon Bond, Goats and Soda, NPR, 2-7-25) The lawsuit accuses Trump of taking "unconstitutional and illegal" actions in trying to shut down the agency, which was created by Congress in 1961. The case brought by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees, which represent foreign service officers and other USAID employees, is intended to halt the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the agency and freeze most foreign aid.
---Kansas’ Moran, Davids sound alarm on delay of USAID food aid to starving people worldwide (Tim Carpenter, Yahoo, 2-7-25) President Donald Trump said he wanted to shut down USAID, which served as the federal government’s primary provider of development and humanitarian aid worldwide. U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said there was a moral imperative for the U.S. government to deliver international food aid to starving people. Senator Moran said a freeze on federal funding and change at the U.S. Agency for International Development left $340 million in lifesaving food grown in the United States sitting at domestic ports awaiting delivery to locations around the world where people were starving.
---USAID’s History Shows Decades of Good Work on Behalf of America’s Global Interests (Christian Ruth, Bunk History, 3-5-25) USAID started in the 1960s as a way to offset the spread of communism. Since then, it has had various other soft-power benefits for the US.
Reuters reported that a senior USAID official wrote in a March 2 internal memo that a yearlong pause in USAID’s work on health, food and agriculture in the world’s poorest countries would raise malaria deaths by 40%, to between 71,000 and 166,000 annually. It would also result in an increase of between 28% and 32% in tuberculosis cases, among other negative effects.
From a foreign policy standpoint, USAID’s greatest contribution to American influence abroad has always been its intangible soft-power effects. It helps to create an image of the U.S. as a positive, helpful world power worth partnering with.
• DOGE sued to follow the law or cease operations (Citizens for Ethics) The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is operating in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Public Health Association, American Federation of Teachers, Minority Veterans of America, VoteVets Action Fund, Center for Auto Safety, Inc., and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), represented by Democracy Forward and CREW. The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the establishment of DOGE is unlawful, and for the court to force DOGE to comply with the transparency, ethics, records retention and equal representation required under FACA.
"Currently, DOGE is operating unchecked, without authorization or funding from Congress and is led by unelected billionaires who are not representative of ordinary Americans. DOGE representatives have reportedly already been speaking with agency officials throughout the federal government, and communication is allegedly taking place on Signal, a messaging app known for its auto-delete features."
• Obamacare would be even harder to kill now, but Trump promises to try anyway (Tami Luhby, CNN, 1-7-24) Nearly 60% of adults had a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act in May 2023, close to the highest share since the law was passed in 2010, according to the KFF Health Tracking Poll. In November 2024, Trump posted on his Truth Social site that Republicans should “never give up” trying to terminate the law and that he would replace it with “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE.”
• Trump’s E.P.A. Seeks to Deny Science That Americans Discovered (Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 2-27-25) Widespread news reports said that the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, has recommended the reversal of the long-standing federal position that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger the public. Trump has said that climate change is a “hoax” and a “scam.” But the proposed reversal would be truly and deeply disgraceful—not just climate denial but basic-science denial. It’s in this country that scientists, funded by or working for the government, came to understand the role of carbon in our atmosphere.
The Trump Administration is resistant to science in general—an unvaccinated school-aged child died in Texas on Wednesday from the measles, even as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was pausing a new COVID-vaccine project.
---EPA pauses Biden’s new chemical disaster protections (Amudalat Ajasa, WaPo, 3-7-25) In a court filing, the agency said it would reassess a new rule that strengthens safeguards at almost 12,000 chemical plants. The EPA asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to pause legal challenges to safety regulations introduced during the Biden administration while it “undertakes a new rulemaking,” without specifying how it would change them. The stricter standards established under the Biden administration were set to go into effect next year and be fully implemented by May 2027.
“We’ve been here before, and the losers are always the families, workers and first responders,” said Adam Kron, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “The EPA should be implementing its chemical disaster safety, not rolling it back.”
• The anti-Trump resistance begins to wake in earnest (WaPo, 2-26-25) After an initial period of stunned confusion, protesters are packing meetings, states are suing, and Democrats are preparing for a budget showdown.
• Donald Trump, Reprised (New Yorker, 11-24) What his return to the Presidency reveals about America. George Saunders on our poisoned wells, Rachel Maddow on crooks and thieves,Timothy Snyder on Trump’s fascism, Jia Tolentino on the gender war, Jane Mayer on the coming decades for the Supreme Court, Kelefa Sanneh on Trump and race, Lorrie Moore on the source of Trump’s continued appeal, and more.
• Trump’s Putinization of America (Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker, 2-20-25) It’s not just in foreign policy that the President is turning Russia’s way. In 2018, at a press conference in Helsinki, Trump announced that he accepted Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia did not intervene in American elections, despite our own intelligence agencies’ conclusion to the contrary. Trump’s embrace of America’s adversary (Russia) and rejection of its ally (Zelensky) has been so swift and complete that even top Kremlin officials are astonished.
• 'Really scary to me': Thomas Friedman on Trump admiring autocratic Russia over democratic Ukraine (Morning Joe, MSNBC, 3-7-25) The New York Times' Thomas Friedman joins Morning Joe to discuss U.S. and Ukrainian officials meeting next week in Saudi Arabia and Trump's public remarks and attitude toward Ukraine and Russia.
• How Trump’s Federal-Aid Fiasco Is Testing the Separation of Powers (Tyler Foggatt, New Yorker, 1-30-25) “We are in an era of a real reckoning with the relationship of the President to the other branches of government,” the Harvard Law professor and New Yorker contributor Jeannie Suk Gersen says.
• The Unchecked Authority of Trump’s Immigration Orders (Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, 1-24-25) The President is recasting migration as a form of “invasion,” broadening his already expansive powers and making anyone in the U.S. who’s undocumented a potential target.
• Killing People Through Corruption: More Examples from Aviation. (James Fallows, Breaking the News, 3-3-25) Some of the assault on governing institutions comes from ignorance and zeal. Some is just corrupt. Together this will lead to deaths.
NOAA and its National Weather Service have produced ever-more precise tools to help aviators avoid these dangers. Now the Doge team has decided that their staffs must be cut. Airlines in the US are still the safest way you can travel. But the odds are not as good as they were six weeks ago, and they will get worse.
Starlink for the FAA is dangerous and corrupt. It is a rush to judgment, in a system that prizes cautious deliberation. And it is naked self-dealing, favoring a company controlled by Elon Musk.
Defunding NOAA and the National Weather Service is dangerous and corrupt. Among other consequences, it jeopardizes probably the biggest single advance in aviation safety, which is ever more-accurate weather awareness. Ongoing cuts at the FAA will turn the aviation infrastructure from something we take for granted into something we need to worry about.
• ‘Frankly Insane’: Trump’s Plan to Ship Migrants to Guantanamo Could Quickly Collapse (Ben Fox, Politico 2-5-25) President Donald Trump plans to send up to 30,000 migrants to the detention facility. Guantanamo has been used to hold people who are coming to the United States. It’s never been used as a place to send people who’ve been in the United States, especially those who have been lawfully in the United States at some point. A reality check from a top lawyer who knows Guantanamo. “Shortsighted policymakers think they found a solution, and they have ended up creating a problem for which they have no exit strategy. That’s exactly what they’re doing again.” (Stopped in its tracks?)
• Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Nationwide (Campbell Robertson and Mattathias Schwartz, NY Times, 2-5-25) The nationwide injunction, from a Maryland case, is more permanent than last month’s restraining order from a judge in Seattle. The Judge's preliminary injunction indefinitely blocked President Trump’s attempt to unilaterally eliminate automatic U.S. citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil.
• Federal judge blocks DOGE from accessing sensitive U.S. Treasury Department material (Associated Press, 2-8-25) Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, was created to discover and eliminate what the Trump administration has deemed to be wasteful government spending. "This unelected group, led by the world's richest man, is not authorized to have this information, and they explicitly sought this unauthorized access to illegally block payments that millions of Americans rely on, payments for health care, child care and other essential programs," said New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office filed the lawsuit, said DOGE's access to the Treasury Department's data raises security problems and the possibility for an illegal freeze in federal funds.
• CNN's 5 Things AM (3-4-25) "The Trump administration is working to develop a cryptocurrency reserve, part of the president's pledge to make the US the "Crypto Capital of the World." However, some prominent tech and crypto leaders have criticized the plan to direct the government to stockpile bitcoin, ethereum and three other tokens. Analysts say it has raised obvious questions of conflict of interest, considering that the company that owns Trump's social media network recently made clear its plans to invest $250 billion in the cryptocurrency industry. Other critics have likened Trump's plan to a government bailout of crypto, an asset class that just experienced its worst trading month in two years. Bitcoin, a market bellwether, fell 18% in February — its steepest drop since June 2022."
---Even the crypto bros don’t love Trump’s proposed crypto reserve (Allison Morrow, CNN, 3-4-25)
---The crypto president has some ideas for your tax dollars (CNN) The company that owns Trump’s social media network, and where Trump is the largest shareholder, recently made clear its plans to invest $250 billion in the cryptocurrency industry.
• FBI agents sue over Justice Dept. effort to ID employees involved in Trump-related investigations (Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer, AP News, 2-4-25) "FBI agents who participated in investigations related to President Donald Trump have sued over Justice Department efforts to develop a list of employees involved in those inquiries that they fear could be a precursor to mass firings.
"Two lawsuits, filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington on behalf of anonymous agents, demand an immediate halt to the collection and potential dissemination of names of investigators who participated in probes of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. One of the complaints says agents were also asked to fill out surveys about their participation in the investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida."
• Protesters in cities across the US rally against Trump’s policies, Project 2025 and Elon Musk (MORGAN LEE, AP News, 2-5-25) Demonstrators gathered in cities across the U.S. on Wednesday to protest the Trump administration’s early actions, decrying everything from the president’s immigration crackdown to his rollback of transgender rights and a proposal to forcibly transfer Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Websites and accounts across social media issued calls for action, with messages such as “reject fascism” and “defend our democracy.” The protests were a result of a movement that has organized online under the hashtags #buildtheresistance and #50501, which stands for 50 protests, 50 states, one day.
• Amid Concern Over Trump Order, New Yorkers Rally to Support Trans Youth (Alyce McFaddenNell Gallogly and Wesley Parnell, NY Times, 2-8-25) Thousands of protesters in Union Square called for action against Trump's executive order that threatens to withhold federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care.
• The Trump administration is said to have dropped a lawsuit over emissions of a toxic chemical in Louisiana. Lisa Friedman, NY Times, 3-3-25) The 2023 lawsuit was among several enforcement actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of poor and minority communities that have disproportionately borne the brunt of toxic pollution.
• Federal Employees Protest Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ Offer With Spoon Emojis (Ryan Mac and Kate Conger, NY times, 2-5-25) Some federal employees have a new symbol for their resistance to President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s radical overhaul of the U.S. government: a spoon. Last week, in an email with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” the administration urged federal workers to consider resigning from their posts and said they would be paid through September — a bid to rapidly shrink the size of the work force.
• Democratic Lawmakers Denied Entry to the Department of Education (NY Times, 2-8-25) In a striking display of the limits being placed on congressional authority in the first weeks of the new administration, several Democratic lawmakers were denied entry to the U.S. Department of Education on Friday.
“Get out of the way,” Representative Maxine Waters of California told a man blocking more than a dozen House Democrats from the doors at the department’s Washington offices. The standoff follows a campaign promise by President Trump to dismantle and eventually shut down the Department of Education, which he has characterized as an agency injecting extreme ideology on race and gender into the nation’s public schools. “We will move everything back to the states, where it belongs,” he said during one campaign speech.
• 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency (Robert Reich, video, on Facebook).
• An intriguing analysis has been circulating online regarding the psychological aspects of Zelensky’s meeting with Trump and Vance, conducted using ChatGPT. (Yuliia Vyshnevska's Post on Facebook)
---The shame of it (Robert Reich, 3-2-25; But it's not our shame) After Trump and Vance’s disgraceful treatment of President Zelensky on Friday, some of you might feel ashamed of America. You might even feel ashamed to be an American. The proper locus of shame is Trump and Vance. The fundamental choice has not been as stark since World War II: Democracy and freedom, or dictatorship and tyranny. Trump and his sycophants are siding with the latter.
• Do read: Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? Sherrilyn Ifill's call to action.
Scroll to the bottom of her post for suggested names of organizations to follow and/or support.