(Updated and expanded from an earlier version)
Alarming news from the first weeks of the second Trump administration:
• This is what dictatorship looks like (Robert Reich, 2-5-25)
We are now in a coup. Trump's goons are taking over the federal government without congressional authority and very little public awareness.
They're using two techniques.
---The first is to physically take over an agency or department.
---The second technique being used by Musk and his tech goons is to gain access to the Treasury Department's payments system, responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government, and alter it.
Says one outside observer: "It's a very strange coup where no one can believe you are doing it so you just waltz in and take what you want."
• Week 1 (Weekly Sift, 1-27-25) "Trump is president now, and that fact has consequences. But he’s not all-powerful. We need to educate ourselves about how to oppose him most effectively."
• Why Washington is getting nervous about a shutdown (Jennifer Scholtes, Politico, 2-5-25) President Donald Trump's truculent first days in office have created an especially unfavorable climate on Capitol Hill for landing any cross-party accord, whether that’s a “grand funding deal” ahead of the government shutdown deadline or an agreement to lift the debt limit to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on more than $36 trillion in loans in the coming months. Washington is growing increasingly worried about the potential for a government shutdown — and what devastation it could bring.Trump infamously presided over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history (35 days!) in 2018–2019.
• Trump and Musk Have All of Washington on Edge—Just Like They Wanted (The DC Brief, Time's politics newsletter, 2-3-25) The candor on the tarmac Sunday night at Joint Base Andrews, under the wing of the presidential aircraft, came without any flinch of self doubt. “This is retaliatory,” President Donald Trump told reporters, essentially summing up his first two weeks in office in the most inelegant but honest bit of sloganeering. He was talking about tariffs against U.S. neighbors but he just as plausibly was describing his posture toward all corners of his new empire.
TREASURY'S PAYMENTS SYSTEM
• Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System
(Andrew Duehren, Maggie Haberman,Theodore Schleifer, and Alan Rappeport, NY Times, 2-1-25)
"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. [No, Musk was not elected to office.]
"The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.
TARIFFS
• Trump hits Canada, Mexico and China with steep new tariffs; Canada retaliates (Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 2-1-25) The White House said today that Trump signed executive orders imposing a 10% tariff on Chinese goods and a 25% tariff on Mexican and most Canadian goods.
• Trump's negotiating style (Facebook reels, read column on the right) The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation of the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president, by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University. "The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation."
---Canada and Mexico Move to Retaliate on Trump Tariff Orders (New York Times, 2-1-25)
---Trump Tariffs Could Hurt Oil Companies and Increase Gas Prices (Rebecca F. Elliott, NY Times, 1-31-25) Some oil refineries will probably struggle to replace imported crude oil if President Trump imposes 25 percent tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico.
---Trump tariff news (Matina Stevis-Gridneff, New York Times, live)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada will retaliate by placing 25 percent tariffs on $106 billion worth of American products.
Trudeau calls on Canadians to choose Canadian goods, to forgo Florida orange juice, Kentucky bourbon, or holidays in the United States.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the country is readying a "forceful and immediate response" if Trump moves forward with tariffs.
• What Are Tariffs and Why Is Trump In Favor of Them? ( Rebecca Schneid, Time Magazine, 2-2-25) Trump has said that he planned to impose tariffs on imported goods to boost American manufacturing and end, what he says, are unfair trade practices. Trump has also stated that the tariffs are intended to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants and illegal drugs into the United States. Discussing the tariffs in a series of posts on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump stated that the decision was made to “protect” Americans “because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl.” (Tariffs are unlikely to stop the flow of fentanyl, but they will also raise the cost of avocados imported from Mexico, for example. I'm puzzled about tariffs and undocumented immigrants.)
AGGRESSIVE NATIONALISM (Panama, Greenland, and Canada)
• The Historical Roots of Donald Trump’s Aggressive Nationalism (Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 1-28-25) What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.
• The Return of American Exuberance (Adam Rowe via Compact, 1-20-25) Trump's foreign policy is not as unprecedented as it seems. Frum captures both its ideals and illusions well, particularly in his warning that Trump threatens to turn America “from protector nation to predator nation.”
EDUCATION
• Here Are Trump’s First-Week Actions That Could Affect Schools (Brooke Schultz, Education Week, 1-24-25)
None of these orders deals with schools exclusively, but they signal how the Trump administration will approach protections for LGBTQ+ students that the Biden administration tried to institute and immigration enforcement on and around school campuses. Some of Trump’s orders that more generally took aim at the workings of the federal government could have an effect on operations at the U.S. Department of Education.
---Overturning years of precedent, immigration officials can now make arrests at schools.
---Trump considering action to dismantle Education Department, sources say (CBS News, 2-3-25)
---Trump order prioritizing education choice likely to affect Ohio less than other states (Katie Millard, Central Ohio News, 2-4-25) Trump’s order directs the Secretary of Education to prioritize school choice programs in its grant programs and requires the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance for states to use grants for educational choice. Educational choice refers to parents being able to choose where to send their children using tax-funded scholarships or vouchers to attend private or charter schools.
---A school safety board, assembled to advise federal agencies on best practices to protect students, was disbanded
---In some of his sweeping first-day actions, the president imposed a temporary hiring freeze at most federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education.
• Trump Admin. Axes Newly Created School Safety Board (Evie Blad, Education Week, 1-25) The Trump administration has disbanded a school safety board that was recently assembled to advise federal agencies on best practices to protect students. The panel was enshrined in legislation, leaving its fate unclear.
IMMIGRATION
• Immigrant Communities in Hiding: ‘People Think ICE Is Everywhere’ (Miriam JordanHamed Aleaziz and Heather Knight, NY Times, 1-30-25) Schools, churches and shops are feeling the chilling effect of the fear of deportation. One minister said fewer congregants were showing up for services. The owner of Park Plaza Barber Shop in Los Angeles said fears of immigration enforcement had led many customers to stay away.
• How Disaster Provides Cover for Authorities to Target Immigrants (V.N. Trinh, Time, Made by History, 1-27-25) Deporting people is challenging and requires time and resources. During Trump’s first term, deportations peaked in the 2019 budget year, when the federal authorities removed about 347,000 people. Efforts to target immigrants amid the 1992 L.A. Uprising point to what deportations might look like under Trump 2.0.
In the Los Angeles Uprising, the LAPD, INS, and other government agencies coordinated to surveil, seize, interrogate, and deport undocumented immigrants. They carried out these efforts indiscriminately, categorizing everyday people going about their daily lives as “riot aliens.” As a result, more than a thousand Los Angeles residents were expelled from their communities.
Just over a year into Donald Trump’s first term as President, immigration agents raided a meat processing plant in Bean Station, Tennessee, arresting 104 workers. It was the largest worksite raid in a decade. Two months later, 114 were arrested at a large-scale nursery in Sandusky, Ohio. The next year, immigration agents raided poultry plants in six towns in central Mississippi, arresting 680 workers in one day.
Eric Ruark predicts that reviving of workplace raids will prompt a collision within the Republican Party, as pro-business Republicans are likely to see the raids as undermining the economy.
SHUTTERING USAID
• Almost all USAID workers will be pulled off the job worldwide, Trump administration says (Ellen Knickmeyer and Matthew Lee, Associated Press, 2-5-25)
• Government showdown: Trump administration clashes with Democrats over move to shutter USAID Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that he is now the acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration is trying to shut down as an independent agency.
• "Make no mistake: The takeover and dismantling of USAID is a test case for whether Musk and the Trump regime can destroy a part of government without legal or political resistance. So far, the answer seems to be yes."~Robert Reich in his blog post on Dictatorship.
PUBLIC HEALTH
• The man no rational person would put in charge of the public’s health (Robert Reich, 1-28-25) "Robert Kennedy Jr. is not just a nutcase. He’s also a designated hitter in the oligarchy’s efforts to get government out of public health — and force Americans to rely instead on private for-profit corporations for their health insurance, hospitalization, vaccines, and pharmaceuticals. These corporations continue to merge into giant for-profit monopolies and oligopolies. If confirmed, Kennedy Jr. would also oversee Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. Taken together, these three programs provide health insurance to more than half the American population.
"Kennedy Jr. has assured senators that he doesn’t want to take vaccines away from Americans but his history of anti-vaccine advocacy has made those promises difficult to believe. He has repeated over 100 times false claims linking vaccines to autism — a theory debunked by decades of scientific research. He was a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, erroneously suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved. RFK Jr.’s misinformation about vaccines continues to endanger public health. Given his anti-vax advocacy, there is no reason to trust his judgment on the development of vaccines against bird flu."
• Trump's Gag Order Halts CDC Publication (Rachael Robertson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today, 1-23-25) "This is a concerning precedent that public health messages won't be left to public health professionals and experts, and instead will be potentially controlled by politicians," Sonja Rasmussen, MD, a former editor of MMWR who worked at the CDC for 20 years, told MedPage Today.
"The bottom line is every day the publication is delayed, doctors, nurses, hospitals, local health departments, and first responders are behind the information curve and less prepared to protect the health of all Americans," Frieden said in a statement shared with MedPage Today.
The federal public health gag order that went into place on January 21 implied that government websites that publish public health data would not be updated -- things like COVID, influenza, RSV, and norovirus surveillance. Bird flu trackers were also under threat, which was pretty bad timing considering New York just joined the states with cases in poultry.
NIH Research Starts Grinding to a Halt: Real Impact
The gag order on communications and meetings to adjudicate research proposals at the NIH also includes purchasing research supplies, CNN reported.
• I’m a health researcher. NIH’s pause on research grants could have a devastating cost. (MSNBC) This is a potentially devastating event — not just for the scientific community, but for all Americans. If this pause is not reversed soon, the fallout for scientific research in the U.S. may be felt for years to come.
• Health Programs Shutter Around the World After Trump Pauses Foreign Aid (Stephanie Nolen, NY Times, 2-1-25) Lifesaving treatment and prevention programs for tuberculosis, malaria, H.I.V. and other diseases cannot access funds to continue work. Lifesaving health initiatives and medical research projects have shut down around the world in response to the Trump administration’s 90-day pause on foreign aid and stop-work orders.
Does the Halt in Foreign Aid Hurt People Yet? Yes: Real Impact. Not next year. Not next month. Not next week. Now.
• Trump hits NIH with ‘devastating’ freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring (Meredith Wadman, Jocelyn Kaiser, STAT News, 1-22-25) Researchers at the National Institutes of Health facing “a lot of uncertainty, fear, and panic.”
Researchers who have clinical trial participants staying at the NIH's on-campus hospital, the Clinical Trial Center, said last week they weren't able to order test tubes to draw blood as well as other key study components. One researcher who was affected said his study would run out of key supplies by this week. If that happened, the research results would be compromised, and he would have to recruit new patients, he said.
• The Mayhem Trump's First Week Did and Did Not Cause in Public Health (Jeremy Faust, MedPage Today, Opinion, 1-27-25) The theory versus reality of what's really happened to date.
TRUMP'S WAR ON Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
• Researchers reel as Trump administration moves quickly to cut funding and end DEI health programs (Angus Chen, Usha Lee McFarling, and Jonathan Wosen, STAT News, 1-20-25) ‘The work is hard enough to do as it is,’ said one advocate who urged scientists to push back,.
---What’s the Point of Trump’s War on D.E.I.? (Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker, 1-31-25) To distract from his larger plan to gut the federal government, the President has taken a relatively powerless program and turned it into an excuse for everything that goes wrong in the country.
---Trump’s DEI purge targets federal workers who did not work in DEI (Laura Meckler, Hannah Natanson, Julian Mark, MSN/Washington Post, 2-1-25) At least 50 employees at the Education Department have been put on leave in recent days after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to eliminate all positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion. But almost none of them worked in jobs directly related to DEI, according to union officials and interviews with affected workers.
ANTI-ABORTION STANCE DESPITE SAYING IT'S A STATE ISSUE
• Trump re-enacts policy banning aid to groups abroad that discuss or provide abortions (Rachel Carlson, Fatma Tanis, Goats and Soda, NPR, 1-24-25) On Friday, he reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which cuts off U.S. aid to any group operating in another country that provides abortion services, counsels people about abortion or advocates for abortion rights.
• Trump Declares Open Season on Abortion Clinics (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, 1-25) Trump’s pardons and the commutations for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists might be the single scariest thing that happened in a really scary week. And now it has an add-on, which is a series of pardons for people who protested—and did a lot more than protest—at abortion facilities (against abortions). It seems like just another song in a different key: Anybody who decided to take the law into their own hands is just fine as long as they were doing it for something that Donald Trump likes.
PLAIN OLD CORRUPTION AND INFLUENCE PEDDLING
• Trump’s crypto-ligarchy (Robert Reich, 1-27-25) "It will blow up in his face — and possibly take the financial system with it. Days before taking the oath of office, Trump announced on his social media platform the creation of the $TRUMP coin, featuring Trump’s image from the July assassination attempt and said: “Join the Trump Community. This is History in the Making!”
Despite no details about the coin’s value, use, or risks, Trump supporters, gamblers, and those wishing to suck up to Trump bought it — sending the coin’s price into the stratosphere. On paper, the Trump family is now several billion dollars richer.
WHAT TO CUT TO PAY FOR MASSIVE TAX CUT and CRACKDOWN ON IMMIGRATION
President Trump wants a massive tax cut and immigration crackdown bill. Now Republicans must decide what to cut to help pay for it.
Top Republicans are passing around a 50-page list of ideas on how to cover the cost of a tax cut and immigration crackdown bill, including cuts to Medicaid and a 10 percent tariff on all imports. The list also includes tax cut proposals, such as lowering the corporate tax rate and eliminating income taxes on tips.
Here are a few options under consideration (a sample from a 50-page document)
Do look at Wikipedia's page on Project 25, the Republican plan that Trump is clearly trying to push through.
WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE
• House G.O.P. Floats Medicaid Cuts and More to Finance Trump’s Huge Agenda
(Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren, NY Times, 1-23-25)
---Read: Draft Options for G.O.P. Cost Cuts for Tax Bill (Ways and Means Committee)
Download the original document:
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/28cb85c5ed1f6c52/44e83eb4-full.pdf
Here are a few items from the 50-page list of Republican proposals:
Limit Federal Health Program Eligibility Based on Citizenship Status
Up to $35 billion 10-year savings
"Currently, many non-citizens who entered the country illegally are eligible for federal health care programs including advance premium tax credits and Medicaid. This policy would remove specified categories of non-citizens from eligibility for federal health care programs."
Eliminate Medicare Coverage of Bad Debt
Up to $42 billion 10-year savings
"Medicare currently reimburses hospitals at 65 percent of bad debt (uncollected cost-sharing that beneficiaries fail to pay), while private payers do not typically reimburse providers for bad debt. This policy brings Medicare more in line with the private sector by gradually reducing the amount that Medicare reimburses providers for bad debt."
Eliminate Inpatient-only List
Up to $10 billion in 10-year savings
Eliminate the inpatient-only list so more same-day surgeries and procedures can be performed in lower cost, outpatient settings
Reform IRA's Drug Policies
Up to $20 billion in 10-year costs
Reform the Inflation Reduction Act's prescription drug policies to discourage price setting on innovative drugs treating rare patient populations.
HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE
Border wall funding appropriation
No score yet; deficit increase
The Homeland Committee would like funds to build border barriers, including the "Trump Wall" (a 33 ft high concrete barrier) along 700+ miles of the border.
The Homeland Committee estimates $18 billion for 734 miles of new wall, $7.8 billion to replace legacy fencing/vehicle barriers, and another $ 10 billion for additional secondary barriers.
Leadership stated the need for Rio Grande River buoys but no specifics were provided.
Again, Download the original document:
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/28cb85c5ed1f6c52/44e83eb4-full.pdf
Finally, take a look at this:
Chairman Trump's Cultural Revolution
(Lucian K.Truscott IV's newsletter, 2-3-25) and tell me we have nothing to worry about.