Trump47 First Week & Beyond Catch-All

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Swaths of U.S. Government Grind to a Halt After Trump Shock Therapy​

Rescinded job offers, delayed health updates and confusion over cutting government checks upend business as usual across Washington​



“… Most agencies were under a hiring freeze that could last up to 90 days, but it could run longer at the Internal Revenue Service, even as the agency enters tax season and the period in which it normally hires many seasonal employees. Rather than the standard 90 days, the Trump order that freezes hiring said that the Treasury Department must sign off before the IRS can hire again. The agency canceled a Thursday webinar to give résumé tips to potential applicants.

An IRS spokesman didn’t reply to an inquiry on social media reports of the agency rescinding job offers.

“As Americans prepare to file their 2024 tax returns starting next week, now is the time they need a qualified customer service representative to answer the phone,” said Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “Freezing hiring at the IRS will severely impact the level of service.”

Agencies were also scrambling to understand a Trump executive order that instituted an immediate pause on the distribution of funds from former President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law and his 2022 climate law, people familiar with the matter said. …”

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Congress didn’t deliver his government shutdown so Trump is doing it on his own. What a trooper.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
The grants are useless in an emergency. You don't need money until you are in the recovery phase. In the response phase, you need highly trained rescuers and their equipment. There is not a single state that has enough of both to manage a major disaster on their own. That's why during Helene we had FEMA teams from as far away as California show up. If FEMA ceases to exist, those teams are not coming anymore.
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Thank you for sharing your perspective.
 
nycfan said:
It takes years to develop these projects and by the time they are into permitting they are pretty far along. I just closed a wind construction facility end of last year and now, though the permitting is mostly local, wondering if FERC is going to quite cooperating with even basic things for wind projects? We're not just talking about front-end situations like developers seeking to lease federal land onshore or offshore for a new project, we're talking about everything that is in process/under construction being impacted by uncertainty, at a minimum. Nuts.
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The company I work for does a lot of offshore wind work. SAPs, COPs, resource surveys, etc.

One thing not being talked about is that the current projects in various stages of development are offshore of Blue States. New lease areas are soon to be offshore of Red states in the Atlantic and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.

I do wonder how the political bent of states where projects and lease areas are offshore will ultimately impact how this goes. I’ll bet that those states of the Gulf of Mexico would actually really like offshore wind as it leverages off of already existing skill sets for offshore oil and gas.
 
TarHeeledTexan said:
The company I work for does a lot of offshore wind work. SAPs, COPs, resource surveys, etc.

One thing not being talked about is that the current projects in various stages of development are offshore of Blue States. New lease areas are soon to be offshore of Red states in the Atlantic and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.

I do wonder how the political bent of states where projects and lease areas are offshore will ultimately impact how this goes. I’ll bet that those states of the Gulf of Mexico would actually really like offshore wind as it leverages off of already existing skill sets for offshore oil and gas.
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Gulf of America*

Fight For Your Right Reaction GIF by Beastie Boys
 
Healing said:
Why the fuck hasn't this been 90% of what comes out the mouths of Dems, for the last 9-12 months?

Leopards man, mf'in leopards.
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Wouldn't have mattered. Nobody was listening to Dems over the last year. 100% of the attention was on Trump, and he was lying his ass off multiple times per day.

That's not to make excuses. I consider Biden's inability to communicate a coherent message to be BY FAR the greatest failure of his administration. But given what the Dems were working with, it's not that much of a surprise so many Americans voted against their interests. The painful part will be when they finally figure it out.
 
lawtig02 said:
Wouldn't have mattered. Nobody was listening to Dems over the last year. 100% of the attention was on Trump, and he was lying his ass off multiple times per day.

That's not to make excuses. I consider Biden's inability to communicate a coherent message to be BY FAR the greatest failure of his administration. But given what the Dems were working with, it's not that much of a surprise so many Americans voted against their interests. The painful part will be when they finally figure it out.
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The thing is, he has lied so much over the last decade that he, at times, told us exactly what he was planning to do, and Trumpers waived it off as rhetorical lies.
 
lawtig02 said:
Wouldn't have mattered. Nobody was listening to Dems over the last year. 100% of the attention was on Trump, and he was lying his ass off multiple times per day.

That's not to make excuses. I consider Biden's inability to communicate a coherent message to be BY FAR the greatest failure of his administration. But given what the Dems were working with, it's not that much of a surprise so many Americans voted against their interests. The painful part will be when they finally figure it out.
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If, a BIG IF, many Americans finally figure it out.
 
lawtig02 said:
Wouldn't have mattered. Nobody was listening to Dems over the last year. 100% of the attention was on Trump, and he was lying his ass off multiple times per day.

That's not to make excuses. I consider Biden's inability to communicate a coherent message to be BY FAR the greatest failure of his administration. But given what the Dems were working with, it's not that much of a surprise so many Americans voted against their interests. The painful part will be when they finally figure it out.
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My cynicism is exceptional, but I don't think anyone can assert nothing would've changed. Likelihood? Sure. But Dems attacked ttump on terms that didn't matter much, i.e. togetherness, hope, democracy, joy, fascism ("nobody" knows what that means, anymore) etc. instead of getting dirty ("weird" isn't dirty). It was unilateral disarmament. The message was scattered.

Right now, P2025 is in full actualization mode. The simplicity of Merkeley's message to the P2025 ghoul, IMO, was the chance (hindsight 20/20 and all) - just needed an army shouting it, and far more charismatic folks than Merkeley (and likely Harris, for that matter). It's economic, it identifies known results, it speaks to "kitchen table issues", it speaks to identity issues, it's cross-cultural, and it's simple attack with simple language and, again, results people can relate to. It was a component of the campaign, but got lost in the "spray the board" strategy.
 
"His (Hitlers) primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

 
Healing said:
My cynicism is exceptional, but I don't think anyone can assert nothing would've changed. Likelihood? Sure. But Dems attacked ttump on terms that didn't matter much, i.e. togetherness, hope, democracy, joy, fascism ("nobody" knows what that means, anymore) etc. instead of getting dirty ("weird" isn't dirty). It was unilateral disarmament. The message was scattered.

Right now, P2025 is in full actualization mode. The simplicity of Merkeley's message to the P2025 ghoul, IMO, was the chance (hindsight 20/20 and all) - just needed an army shouting it, and far more charismatic folks than Merkeley (and likely Harris, for that matter). It's economic, it identifies known results, it speaks to "kitchen table issues", it speaks to identity issues, it's cross-cultural, and it's simple attack with simple language and, again, results people can relate to. It was a component of the campaign, but got lost in the "spray the board" strategy.
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I hear you. But it's not like Dems didn't talk about Project 2025. They did AT LENGTH. But Trump lied and said he knew nothing about it, and enough Americans either weren't paying attention or are conditioned to believe Trump's lies that it wasn't enough to move the dial.

I have zero interest in defending Democratic messaging over the last few years. But I also think it's true that Trump's superpower is his ability to fill every inch of space in whatever room he's occupying. He vomits so much (mostly false) information every day that there's little space for a counter message. The media is highly culpable here. It's their job to figure out how to cover this, and they have failed miserably. But setting blame aside, the reality is Trump has enjoyed an unbelievably open platform to spread his (mostly false) message for years now, and I don't think there's any one messaging change the Dems could have made to counter that in the 2024 election.
 
lawtig02 said:
Wouldn't have mattered. Nobody was listening to Dems over the last year. 100% of the attention was on Trump, and he was lying his ass off multiple times per day.

That's not to make excuses. I consider Biden's inability to communicate a coherent message to be BY FAR the greatest failure of his administration. But given what the Dems were working with, it's not that much of a surprise so many Americans voted against their interests. The painful part will be when they finally figure it out.
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Yep. In the moment of the 2020 election, Biden was the right guy. But just in that moment. He was highly experienced and extremely bland. He was the opposite of Trump in those regards and what America was looking for after four years of Trump. But he was the wrong incumbent to have for the 2024 election. His age, the effects of his age, his lack charisma, and his inability to adequately communicate a message to Americans put him in a terrible position for 2024.
 
Trump is apparently visiting WNC today to score political points at the expense of Helene victims. Just for the benefit of those on this board who do not have personal connections to WNC, I can assure you the truth is:

1. FEMA has been on the ground since Day 1, and every level of government, from federal to municipalities, has been working effectively to help the people and communities in need.
2. Volunteers have dedicated millions of hours of time and effort for the victims of the flooding, and that effort is deeply appreciated by most people in the affected communities.
3. There's a long way to go. WNC will be recovering for years, and some areas may never recover. Some people will never get their homes and businesses back. But a lot of work has been done in a remarkably short amount of time, and the people who live in WNC are working their asses off to reclaim their lives.
4. While some in WNC are not happy with Biden and FEMA for various reasons, the VAST majority of people in the affected communities are grateful for the immense amount of support that has been provided.

Trump will lie about all of this. He'll lie about it for political reasons. He'll lie about it because he wants to hurt Democrats. He'll lie about it because he doesn't give a shit about North Carolinians. He'll lie about it because he's a liar and an asshole.

I just want everyone to know some semblance of the truth. I don't live in WNC, but I've spent many days up there over the last few months. I've spent many hours on the phone helping victims with their legal needs. Trump knows nothing about WNC. And I don't want his incredible ability to fill the room to contaminate the reality of the work people are actually doing to get WNC back on its feet.
 
nycfan said:
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That was part of the purpose of Social Security in the first place. Before the SS Act was passed and implemented most elderly workers had nothing to fall back on that would allow them to retire. People literally worked until they died. Having Social Security gave them a source of income that allowed them to retire. This opened up jobs for people just entering the workforce.
 
nycfan said:
“… Brian T. Moynihan, Bank of America’s chief executive, asked a rote, prepared question about the new administration’s plans for the economy.

Mr. Trump capped off a nearly two-minute response by observing:

“By the way, speaking of you — and you’ve done a fantastic job — but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” Mr. Trump said.

He continued, referring to JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon (who was not on the stage), “You and Jamie and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives, because what you’re doing is wrong.”

Mr. Moynihan responded with what appeared to be a nervous laugh, and by changing the subject to next year’s World Cup. …”

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What the ever-loving fuck is he talking about???
 
Patb78 said:
That was part of the purpose of Social Security in the first place. Before the SS Act was passed and implemented most elderly workers had nothing to fall back on that would allow them to retire. People literally worked until they died. Having Social Security gave them a source of income that allowed them to retire. This opened up jobs for people just entering the workforce.
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And of course it's those that are not as well-off that would have to work until they die.
 
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