Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread
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“… Probationary workers across multiple federal health agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services received virtually identical letters Saturday evening informing them they would be terminated from their positions, sources told CBS News.
"Unfortunately, the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency's current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the Agency," read the letter obtained by CBS News.
The letter was signed by Jeffrey Anoka, acting head of human resources for the Department of Health and Human Services. One health official told CBS News thousands of letters were sent out Saturday. …”
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“…
More than 5,000 probationary workers at health agencies had initially been slated to be let go, though not all received letters of termination Saturday. Some letters were also sent in error to people not intended to be let go, officials said.
Some agencies have also been granted exemptions for a portion of their staff on the chopping block, as backlash has mounted over cuts at agencies like the Indian Health Service.
Also not on the final list of cuts ordered by the Trump administration was the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, the agency's "disease detectives," CBS News learned. Officials overseeing the fellowship had initially warned health departments and those in their ranks that they would be halved.
Fellowship programs elsewhere in the agency were not as lucky. Officials said CDC's Public Health Associate Program, which places recent graduates in health departments throughout the country, was cut.
Other agencies losing staff Saturday include the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which oversees the nation's pandemic stockpiles, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Institutes of Health. …”
lawtig02
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Diplomacy by Fox News zingers. Bill O’Reilly must be so proud.
heelinhell
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I think reporting this story is important because paving over the Rose Garden carries symbolic weight much like renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Mt. Denali and suggesting seizing the Panama Canal, the annexation of Canada, and purchase of Greenland.
What if Trump decided to paint the White House in a shade of gold and rename it Trump Castle ? Would that be utterly insignificant ?
Of course he would never do this (or would he ?), but my point is that Trump is subtly attempting to showcase his presumed autocratic power by making these seemingly outlandish actions/suggestions, and media should not only report these stories, but they must put these stories in the proper and larger context.
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Bluesky
bsky.app
Opinion | The Barrage of Trump’s Awful Ideas Is Doing Exactly What It’s Supposed To
Amid an onslaught of bad ideas, Democrats need to muster a better vision for the future.
“… Flooding the ether with bad ideas isn’t Trump’s unique know-how — it’s standard autocratic fare. Hannah Arendt used the word “preposterous” to describe the ideas that underpinned 20th-century totalitarian regimes. Bad ideas do a lot of the work of building autocracy.
By forcing us to engage with them, they make our conversations, our media and our society dumber. By conjuring the unimaginable — radical changes in the geography of human relationships, the government and the world itself as we have known it — they plunge us into an anxious state in which thinking is difficult. That kind of anxiety is key to totalitarian control.
Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in the United States for immigrants and trans people.
But those of us with experience can tell you that most of the time, for most people, it’s not frightening. It is stultifying. It’s boring. It feels like trying to see and breathe under water — because you are submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being reflected in bad journalism and, eventually, in bad literature and bad movies. …”
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“…The idea that government is fundamentally suspect has been around for so long, has become so widely held — and has had such a dumbing-down effect on public conversation — that a full-throated defense of the ideals and institutions of American government seems cringe-worthy.Bluesky
“… Flooding the ether with bad ideas isn’t Trump’s unique know-how — it’s standard autocratic fare. Hannah Arendt used the word “preposterous” to describe the ideas that underpinned 20th-century totalitarian regimes. Bad ideas do a lot of the work of building autocracy.
By forcing us to engage with them, they make our conversations, our media and our society dumber. By conjuring the unimaginable — radical changes in the geography of human relationships, the government and the world itself as we have known it — they plunge us into an anxious state in which thinking is difficult. That kind of anxiety is key to totalitarian control.
Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in the United States for immigrants and trans people.
But those of us with experience can tell you that most of the time, for most people, it’s not frightening. It is stultifying. It’s boring. It feels like trying to see and breathe under water — because you are submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being reflected in bad journalism and, eventually, in bad literature and bad movies. …”
… Trump’s other bad ideas have the same effect.
… the argument Democrats have advanced against all of Trump’s bad ideas boils down to “You can’t do that.”
Actually, it would appear, he can.
…Admonitions to obey the law will not stop Trump and will not dissuade his supporters.
Trump’s bad ideas must be countered with good ones. His attack on the government has to be contrasted with a vision of how the system could work and should work — for the people, not the emperor-in-the-making.
This is an extremely difficult kind of resistance to muster because it calls for clear thought and inspired vision just when the onslaught of bad ideas, and the anxiety they engender, make it so difficult to think clearly and envision a future….”
WaynetheDrain
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Because once Trump enacts his tariffs on Canada, we're going to need to get our lumber from somewhere. No need for rangers when the trees are going to get cut down.
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This Administration is pro-autocrat generally and pro-Russia specifically. The VP just compared Russian interference in European elections to an autistic teen girl “scolding” people and blamed Europe for fighting, rather than listening to, far right propaganda.
I think the stunt to make an absurdist offer to Zelensky to turn over half of Ukraines rare earth minerals was a setup for a deal that is already being cut between the Trump administration and the Putin regime — Russia currently controls most of the Ukrainian territory with rare earth deposits. I think the deal being cut will be Russia keeps that territory if it divvies up those rare earth spoils with the USA.
lawtig02
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That’s a really good opinion piece. We see it on here every day. Smart people who have become so inculcated with years and years of bad information that they truly, sincerely believe it and will not consider the possibility they might be the victims of a massive disinformation campaign. And now they’re so bought in they can’t even speak out against the obvious authoritarianism we’re seeing on a daily basis.
H. L. Mencken spoke to this in the early 20th century.
Mencken, the curmudgeonly Sage of Baltimore, turned phrases that I sometimes quote today. 'No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. ' 'American democracy consists of jackals worshiped by jackasses. ' 'For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.
Words to live by in these troubled times.
Mencken, the curmudgeonly Sage of Baltimore, turned phrases that I sometimes quote today. 'No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. ' 'American democracy consists of jackals worshiped by jackasses. ' 'For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.
Words to live by in these troubled times.
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Yeah, thought I had posted it last night but never did.
Trump Suggests No Laws Are Broken if He’s ‘Saving His Country’
President Trump shared a quotation on social media, making it clear it was one he wanted people to absorb: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
“… By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
Nonetheless, the sentiment was familiar: Mr. Trump, through his words and actions, has repeatedly suggested that surviving two assassination attempts is evidence that he has divine backing to enforce his will. …”
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Cont’d
“… But, taken at face value, Mr. Trump’s statement on Saturday went much further [than DOJ invoking Unitary Executive theories], suggesting that even if what he is doing unambiguously breaks an otherwise valid law, that would not matter if he says his motive is to save the country.
There are a handful of instances of other presidents claiming the power to override legal limits, but those have usually been limited to national security.
In the early days of the Civil War, for example, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus rights, called up troops and otherwise spent money that Congress, which was not in session, had not appropriated.
When Congress reconvened, Lincoln sent them a letter telling them what he had done and famously asking, “are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” He also said that what he had done, “whether strictly legal or not,” had been necessary, and Congress retroactively ratified his actions.
More than a century later, after President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached in the Watergate scandal, he talked in an interview about wiretapping and other steps that might appear to be illegal but were undertaken to protect against foreign threats. Citing Lincoln’s example, Nixon said presidents have inherent power to authorize government officials to break laws if the president decides that doing so is in the national interest.
“When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,” Nixon claimed.
…
Mr. Trump and some of his allies have pushed the political argument that the nation has been under siege from what they characterize as leftist policies and values, and has fallen into a spiral of decline that must be reversed by any means necessary.
Among them, Mr. Trump’s budget chief, Russell Vought, wrote an essay in 2022, declaring that the United States was already in a “post-Constitutional moment” and that to push back against liberals, it was necessary to be “radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution.” “
“… But, taken at face value, Mr. Trump’s statement on Saturday went much further [than DOJ invoking Unitary Executive theories], suggesting that even if what he is doing unambiguously breaks an otherwise valid law, that would not matter if he says his motive is to save the country.
There are a handful of instances of other presidents claiming the power to override legal limits, but those have usually been limited to national security.
In the early days of the Civil War, for example, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus rights, called up troops and otherwise spent money that Congress, which was not in session, had not appropriated.
When Congress reconvened, Lincoln sent them a letter telling them what he had done and famously asking, “are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” He also said that what he had done, “whether strictly legal or not,” had been necessary, and Congress retroactively ratified his actions.
More than a century later, after President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached in the Watergate scandal, he talked in an interview about wiretapping and other steps that might appear to be illegal but were undertaken to protect against foreign threats. Citing Lincoln’s example, Nixon said presidents have inherent power to authorize government officials to break laws if the president decides that doing so is in the national interest.
“When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,” Nixon claimed.
…
Mr. Trump and some of his allies have pushed the political argument that the nation has been under siege from what they characterize as leftist policies and values, and has fallen into a spiral of decline that must be reversed by any means necessary.
Among them, Mr. Trump’s budget chief, Russell Vought, wrote an essay in 2022, declaring that the United States was already in a “post-Constitutional moment” and that to push back against liberals, it was necessary to be “radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution.” “
sringwal
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Yeah, thought I had posted it last night but never did.
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I look forward to the insight from our resident apologists and don ciphers for how this quote is:
- In keeping with a country of law and order
- In keeping with the constitutional framework of a democracy
- In keeping with a presidency and not a monarchy/autocracy
heelinhell
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“Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
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That is my favorite. There are rarely simple solutions to complex problems, and those who peddle such solutions are charlatans. Our obligation as responsible citizens is to call them out.