Weekly Roundup

Chaos and Racism Ensues In Trump's First Week In Office - As Expected

Executive Branch

Masks are off, as the far-right fascist MAGA party - that has largely taken over the Republican party by crawling into and reanimating its dying carcass - unveiled their plans to destroy what took us 250 years to build. Musk’s ‘Sieg Heiling’ behind the Presidential Seal at the MAGA inaugural gathering was a clear indication to neo-NAZI and white supremacist groups, exactly who their real allies are. It is no accident that Trump and his key donor Musk are using the same dirty tricks and playbook of the NAZI party. Musk’s meddling in European elections is yet another indication of his goal to buy a dystopian future where the oligarchs rule the world, unimpeded by morals or democratic rule. The proof of this is in Musk’s own words and actions, as reported and projected on the Berlin Gigafactory by @LedByDonkeys on YouTube, who call for a world wide boycott on Tesla products:

Musk is also reported to want an office right next to the oval office, but Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is said to have nixed that idea, in favor of placing the oligarchs and anyone else who wants Trump’s ear both physically, in offices outside of the White House in the nearby Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and practically, by establishing layers of access that must be crossed to engage the President. The hope is this will create a stable environment where Trump can’t destabilize the Christian White Nationalist agenda. I can’t tell which would be worse, a stable or unstable regime in Washington.

Cabinet

Trump’s cabinet is starting to solidify with the narrow approval of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense - with tie breaking vote in the Senate by Vice President Vance. Former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem has also been approved as Secretary of Homeland Security. When I get the time when I’m not applying for jobs, I’ll update the Resistance Radio Trump Report Card Spreadsheet with the status of confirmations to date.

Immigration

As promised, ICE has begun rounding up and shipping immigrants to other countries aboard flights, including the use of military aircraft. There is a question if some of these immigrants were indeed illegal or even American citizens: given reports of ICE not accepting the DD214 or VA ID card as valid from a former service member they detained who is a citizen. A number of the aircraft are being turned away by foreign governments, others say they will accept them if they are not shackled and treated respectfully in transit after some rangling regarding tariffs. Other people who have been waiting for legal immigration appointments and came to the Mexican border to enter for their appointments, have had their meetings cancelled indefinitely after the shutdown of the CBP One app, causing more distress for people already stressed and in danger. Entry into the United States of refugees under the USRAP (U.S. Refugee Admissions Program) was also suspended. The president has characterized this effort as getting rid of criminals, but the pictures I’ve seen look mostly like scared normal families to me. I haven’t seen many children, which makes me wonder where they are and how are they being cared for when this happens?

ICE Round Up of ‘Criminals’

One of Trump’s key immigration related orders was his assertion that Birthright Citizenship, as set forth in The 14th Amendment, and the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 is no longer valid. ICE has detained members of the Navajo Nation, suggesting that they are not American Citizens. Where are they going to send them? This is so insane - and yet if resistance to this goes to the Supreme Court, it’s anyone’s guess how it will turn out. I would suggest for native lawyers to argue that indigenous peoples are the ONLY birthright citizens in the USA, given how the rest of us got here in the first place.

Executive Orders

The Trump executive orders continue to flow, including many contradictory and confusing orders:

• Declaring a National Energy Emergency, while at the same time:

• Withdrawing all offshore leasing of continental shelf areas for Wind Energy Farms, and:

• Expanding drilling for oil and minerals, while:

• Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, (Climate Change / Global Warming is not real! [it is]), and:

• Rerouting water from the Sacremento River to Southern California - for no real reason - just an imaginary one to fix something that isn’t broken.

• Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship - Stops birthright citizenship, as established in the 14th Amendment (This is temporarily blocked by courts with cases pending)

• All of the numerous anti-immigration orders as reviewed in the previous section, including detaining and questioning the citizenship of native Americans (who were declared citizens specifically by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and implied via section 1 of the 14th Amendment), and yet:

• Establish a plan to federally recognize the Lombee Tribe of North Carolina as a legitimate indian tribe to recieve full benefits from the government, and:

• Renaming Mt. Denali and the Gulf of Mexico (e.g. native names) to Mt. McKinley and the Gulf of America respectively. Are they for or against natives; I’m losing the plot at this point?

• A large number of orders address dismantling DEI and DEIA in government agencies, which they say will restore ‘merit’ based hiring, which is code for ‘white men based hiring - regardless of merit’. Considering there are 18 million veterans, millions of which are disabled - they are ALL DEIA hires, so that might not be a good idea if you don’t want to piss off a bunch of PTS’d combat veterans and the like.

• Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship - code for “we don’t want the government to stop our misinformation propaganda campaigns to rewrite reality for the suckers - er - voters who are exposed to it.” He who has the biggest megaphone gets to decide what is reality and what is not.

• Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government - code for “we are above the law and should never be investigated.” And, “we’re going to use the Gestapo - er - the Justice Department to get revenge on those who brought us to justice.”

• Application of Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to TikTok - “We’re not going to apply it - at least for 75 days - probably more.”

• Withdrawl of America from the World Health Organization (WHO). That can’t have bad consequences for health around the world, and here at home, right?

• Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the United States Federal Workforce - code for “let’s eliminate professional government experts, and replace them with Trump loyalists.” I’ve seen this kind of thing in the corporate world where the consequences are less deadly; it never turned out good, and the people who hand-waived reality were forced to cry mea-culpa as their will to bend physics and time always failed in ways that were not able to be swept under the rug.

• Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure Of Sensitive Governmental Information - 51 intelligence analysts had their security clearances revoked due to a letter they published exposing the ‘Hunter Biden Laptop Controversy’ as a probable Russian misinformation campaign to influence the 2020 election. They were punished by Trump for telling the truth, which the American public really needed as a key item to ensure free and fair elections. These revocations will likely be challenged in court.

• Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety - 2.5 million dead Americans from Covid19 weren’t enough - let’s kill more because that will make us safe. Perhaps we should look at other countries with very low crime rates and low recidivism rates?

• Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid - code for, “I don’t like what and who we’re sending foreign aid to. It should only go to what I (Trump) approve.” This includes a 90 day moratorium on deliveries, and reaccessment of programs. Of course, if Congress established the aid - then not sure how this will work because Trump is supposed to administer law, not make it up as he goes. This will impact Ukraine for sure.

• Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential - code for, “drill baby, drill.”

• America First Policy Directive To The Secretary Of State - code for, “Let’s renew the old KKK slogan and American NAZI Party slogan from WWII!” Nothing racist about this, right?

• Establishing And Implementing The President's "Department Of Government Efficiency" - This actually is a bait and switch for Elon Musk - placing DOGE as part of “reorganization and renaming of the United States Digital Service. The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS)” - tasked with modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. The existing USDS is the IT department of the Executive Branch. Oops Elon - you didn’t think you’d be a glorified website designer, did you?

• Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government - This one is both stupid and evil at the same time. It defines sex as male or female only - not as an identity - but as that at conception. The stupid part is that at conception we are ALL female, we don’t start differentiating visibly into the different sexes until 11 weeks to 20 weeks. Also - there are people with genetic disorders that don’t develop the sexual organs that match their genetics for various reasons. So while they were concieved as a male, for example, their body develops as a partial female. The evil part is it denies transexual people rights by eliminating the option to not select sex in drivers licenses, passports, and other government documents. This is not expanding rights, but taking them away, for reasons that are not real - just the fever dream fears of anti-LGBTQ+ people.

• Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology - Establishes support for dollar-backed block-chain stable coins world wide, while making the use of Central Bank Digital Currencies from outside the US illegal. It should be noted that the mining of block-chain based bit-coins and the like waste gobs (giga-watts) of energy - which providers of datacenter resources (e.g. Amazon et al) are now trying to negotiate with power providers for direct connections separate from the grid on a advantaged footing compared to the general public. Oligarchs at work again rigging the system for their own benefit.

• Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - Speaks for itself.

• Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency - code for, “we need to get the political bias out of FEMA - and make them MAGA loyal again.”

• Enforcing the Hyde Amendment - Blocks use of Federal funds for abortion related care. They immediately shut down the government reproductive rights website - but a private organization put it back up here: https://www.theskimm.com/news/reproductive-rights-gov

• Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence - code for, “Release the Kraken!” This could be very bad for everyone as AI now has no limitations to its use or development.

• President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology - establishes a 24 member council on science, technology, and education to advise the president. Of course, everyone on it is hand picked by Trump and serve at his will.

• Pardons - he pardoned 1500 January 6th insurrectionists who were in jail, or waiting to go to trial. He also pardoned some bad cops who were convicted of killing a young black man and covering up the evidence. Some real ‘good people’ there, eh?

• Finally - rescinding orders of the Biden Administration, and establishing the nomination of acting cabinet members - too numerous to evaluate at this time.

So his ‘shock and awe’ campaign is more like a ‘hate and evil’ campaign - hurting many people who don’t deserve to be, and taking away rights from many others. A number of these orders are already in the process of being challenged in court, so stay tuned. The remainder were very meaty bones thrown to the oligarchs to give them certain advantages, both in terms of access, and government subsidies. Corporate Welfare is real, and ‘Trumps’ the spending on social safety net programs, hands down.