News Briefs #4

There has been a lot happening in US politics in the last week. Time to catch up on a few of them.

Trump’s Address to Congress

I won’t add much to the commentary on Trump’s address to Congress last night. It was what we have come to expect from him – 100 minutes of lies, bragging, blaming, and sheer ignorance. I’ll give an example of each.

Lies – Trump said his highest priority is to rescue the economy and get “dramatic and immediate relief to working families”, and blamed Biden for “an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare”. Anyone who has been following the US economy knows that Biden left the economy in the best shape in decades, the envy of the world, and that the US weathered the global inflation better than most wealthy countries. In just over a month Trump has ripped the US economy in tatters.

Bragging – “...to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country. We have accomplished more in 43 days …and we are just getting started”. “We are going to forge the freest, most advanced, most dynamic and most dominant civilization ever to exist on the face of this Earth”.

Blaming – He blamed the price of eggs, which he promised to bring down on day one, on Joe Biden’s energy policy.

Ignorance – He proved he has learned nothing about economics, and either refuses to listen to his advisors or he just doesn’t get it, when he still refers to trade deficits as subsidies to countries like Canada. And he was apparently talking about himself when he referred to Lesotho as a country “nobody has ever heard of”.

Who is the Head of DOGE?

For weeks now Trump regime lawyers have been saying that Elon Musk is not the head of DOGE, though it is obvious that he is the one giving orders. In his speech last night, Trump gave it away “DOGE – perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight”.

Ukraine Aid and Intelligence Pauses

The day after Trump cut off all military aid to Ukraine, including much of what was passed by Congress under Biden, Trump has stuck it again to Ukraine. On Tuesday CIA Director John Ratcliiffe announced that the US has stopped sharing millitary targeting information with Ukraine. The rationale? To force Ukraine to accept Trump’s one-sided peace deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/us/politics/cia-director-ukraine-intelligence.html

I suspect that former allies, like the Five Eyes Alliance, are now being more careful in what they share with the US, knowing that it is likely to be passed on to Russia. What really worries me is that Ukraine’s military is still highly dependent on Musk’s Starlink system and that Musk has previously threatened to turn it off.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/05/us-stops-sharing-intelligence-on-russia-with-ukraine

SCOTUS Ruling on Aid Contracts

The Supreme Court on Wednesday in an emergency hearing upheld a judge’s decision ordering the Trump regime to immediately release the $2 billion in foreign aid payments owed under existing contracts. Roberts and Barrett joined the liberal justices to make a 5-4 ruling. In keeping with Trump’s mindset of retribution, he reportedly greeted Chief Justice Roberts at the address last night with “I won’t forget”. Roberts didn’t, but should have, replied “You’d better not”.

https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-in-the-aftermath-of

FBI Returns Stolen Boxes to Mar-a-Lago

Last Friday, February 28, the FBI returned to President Trump the boxes of files that were being held as evidence in the criminal case that was dropped on Trump’s election. These were the boxes that Trump had stolen when he left the White House and either returned voluntarily after being subpoenaed, or seized in the subsequent raid. What a travesty of justice!

Trump of course sees this move as vindication: “The Department of Justice has just returned the boxes that deranged Jack Smith made such a big deal about. I did absolutely nothing wrong.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/trump-documents-maralago-fbi.html

Chesterton’s Fence

G. K.  Chesterton (1874-1936), British author, philosopher and Christian apologetic, is best known for his short stories featuring priest-turned-detective Father Brown.

One of my news articles or opinion pieces this morning mentioned Chesterton’s parable of the fence, and related it to current US political events (and typically I can’t find it now to provide the source – I just want you to know the original idea wasn’t mine). Anyway, the parable goes like this:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

The parable is often shortened to just “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”

Last week, starting Wednesday February 27, the State Department in Washington cut funding to 5,800 projects around the world that had been funded by USAID (United States Agency for International Development). These projects included refugee camps, polio vaccination programs, TB clinics, malaria prevention, clean water projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, HIV care and treatment for 10,000 children and 10,000 pregnant women in three African countries, shelters for women who were victims of rape and domestic abuse, feeding millions of malnourished children in Yemen and Nigeria, the only health clinic in a region of Sudan, providing medical care, food and water to refugees of the war in Ethiopia, and thousands and thousands more programs like these. We won’t even know how many people die as a result of these cuts because programs tracking such statistics have also been canceled.

There does not appear to be any attempt to examine these programs to find out what they are doing or why USAID is funding them. They were just “fences” in the road of the Trump regime’s drive to cut government “waste, fraud and corruption”.

Most of the staff of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are young software engineers. There are no forensic accountants to carefully examine each program to see where they could be made to run more efficiently. I don’t know if there are any staff with even basic accounting training.

The Trump regime is destroying that which it does not understand.

Sources:

https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-terminations.html

MTG's Rant on the Bureaucracy

Mary Trump Nerd Avengers Thursday Feb 27 played a video clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking in response to demonstrations protesting the firing of federal employees.

You can protest all you want outside of departments of this government. You can protest all you want, but the American people disagree with you. You’re protecting the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is not a business. Those are not real jobs producing federal revenue, but by the way they are consuming taxpayer dollars. Those jobs are paid for by the American tax people who work real jobs, earn real income, pay federal taxes and then pay these federal employees. Federal employees do not deserve their jobs. Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks. And these are jobs that can be fired at will.

The ignorance demonstrated by this rant is appalling. Where to start.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, known as MTG, is a Republican Representative for Georgia with a well-earned reputation for making outrageous statements.

In this diatribe, she first refers to a strong mandate from the American people to carry out the mass firings by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). I addressed this mandate in my January 28 post. Yes, more voters voted for Trump than Harris but more voters voted for someone else than for Trump. And I am very sure that many if not most of those who did vote for Trump are not happy with what Musk is doing. Especially those who were fired or whose co-workers were fired. About half of the employees losing their jobs were Trump supporters – I suppose a few still are.

Next, she states the obvious fact that government is not a business. No, government is not a business, and it should not be run as a business. Government’s function is to provide services to the people, paid for by tax dollars. These services include

Then she argues that they are not real jobs because they don’t produce revenue for the Federal government. Well, some do and some don’t. An example of employees who provide a service that is at least partly paid by user fees are National Park campground staff. Examples of employees whose services are not paid by user fees include police, fire fighters, and yes most clerical staff which seems to be who MTG is referring to with the term “bureaucracy”.

She goes on to say that because they aren’t doing real jobs, like those whose taxes pay their salaries, they don’t deserve their jobs or their paychecks.

Are the police and firefighters not real jobs, doing real work, providing real services for the American people? Of course they are.

Greene is herself a federal employee. Her salary is paid out of the federal treasury with taxpayer money. Does she do real work? None that I have seen. Does she deserve her paycheck? Well, let’s just say I’m sure she thinks she does. I assume she has aides hired to work for her. Do they do real work? Do they deserve their paychecks? If they were fired and Greene did all the work herself that would be more efficient and save the taxpayers money.

The final jab that they can be fired at will is simply not true. There are labor laws that protect federal employees just like most other employees.

After the clip Mary Trump commented that MTG must be looking in a mirror because the only federal employees who are not doing their job are the Congressional Republicans. In the House of Representatives they have abdicated all responsibility to control the government and to create and manage all government agencies. In the Senate they abdicated all their obligations to advice and consent regarding the appointment of Trump’s cabinet members.

Wajahat Ali then points out that Donald Trump has spent a quarter of his presidency golfing, costing taxpayers more than $11 million to fly him back and forth to Florida. And Elon Musk has received $38 billion of taxpayer’s money in contracts.

Maybe these are the federal employees who should be fired.

 Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIkKZIEpAFQ starting at 23.0 minutes

Are Republicans Pro-Life?

Republicans like to claim they are the Pro-Life party. But are they really?

It depends on how you define it and whose life you are talking about. Evangelicals usually mean anti-abortion when they use the term Pro-Life. But in the most complete sense of the word it means to honor and respect human life from conception to natural death.

I’m going to leave the conception to birth controversy for now and look at the birth to death period of human life. How do Republican policies reflect honor and respect for human life during that phase? And I’m going to apply it to all Americans – after all they want to prevent abortions for all Americans – rich or poor, White or Black.

In his March 17, 2023 substack post Thom Hartmann asks if there is any area where Republicans put human life ahead of money, and admits he can’t find a single one. He lists many policy areas in which lives are sacrificed for profit:

·        Pollution kills people. Republicans fight every regulation for clean air and water because it costs big business money (and the wealthy can afford to live away from their factories). In Trump’s first regime he rolled back over 100 environmental regulations. In Trump 2 Elon Musk is gutting the EPA.

·        Homelessness kills people. Republicans are opposed to any of their tax money going to shelter homeless people. They just want them to stay away from their part of the city so they don’t have to see them.

·        Guns kill people and are now the leading cause of child deaths. Republicans are known for their opposition to any gun restrictions.

·        Hunger kills children. Republicans are opposed to programs that provide school lunches. The budget they are working on now will likely eliminate or drastically cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which assists low-income families with their grocery budget.

·        Suicide kills more gay men than AIDS and kills 4x more queer children than cis children. Republicans persecute gay and trans people when what they need is more understanding and support.

·        Cancer kills people. Republicans fight to keep known carcinogen pesticides and additives in our food. Trump’s new appointee in the EPA to oversee approval for chemicals, Lynn Dekleva, was a Dupont lobbyist who fought against regulation of formaldehyde.

·        Infections kill people, especially children and the elderly. Republicans oppose mandatory vaccinations. Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now Secretary of Health and Human Services which oversees CDCP, FDA, Medicare and Medicaid. An unvaccinated child died of measles in Texas last week, the first in a decade.

·        Poverty kills people. Republicans consistently oppose raising minimum wage and other labor regulations that improve the lives of workers.

·        Lack of health insurance kills people. Republicans are strongly opposed to increasing coverage of Medicare and Medicaid and are about to slash their coverage in this month’s budget.

·        Premature birth kills babies. Republicans fight any proposal to provide housing, food or medical care to pregnant women.

·        Not being part of a union kills 54% more workers. Republicans fight unions and the right to unionize.

·        Climate change is killing people. Republicans won’t even admit it exists.

Wherever saving lives costs money the Republicans will fight it.

Hartmann concludes that Republicans are not the Party of Life. They are the Party of Death.

 

Source:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-gop-claims-to-be-the-party-of

Eisenhower was the Last Legitimate GOP President

In his November 20, 2023, substack post Thom Hartmann made a remarkable statement. He said that Dwight Eisenhower was the last Republican president who won an honest election. He was also the last who “believed in democracy, the rule of law, and that government should prioritize what the people want”. All the GOP presidents since have either cheated, often to the point of treason, or inherited it from one who did.

Let’s look at each one.

The first was Richard Nixon who took millions in bribes while VP to Eisenhower. He ran for president in 1960 against John Kennedy and was trailing in the polls. In 1959 Fidel Castro had just taken over Cuba from the dictator Batista who was a friend of Nixon (and of Nixon’s mafia friends). Castro came to the US looking for economic aid for his country but Nixon turned him down so Castro turned to Khrushchev, leader of the USSR. Kennedy used this - turning Cuba communist - against Nixon in the presidential campaign. To counter this attack Nixon tried to have Castro overthrown, making him (Nixon) a hero in time for the election. The plot failed and so did Nixon’s presidential run.

Nixon tried again in 1968 running against Hubert Humphrey who was Lyndon Johnson’s VP. Johnson had been working hard on a peace deal to end the Vietnam War and had an agreement ready to sign that fall. Nixon sent his men to South Vietnam and offered them a better deal if they would wait until after the election. Johnson learned about this (from the FBI) 3 days before the election but didn’t say anything publicly while privately calling it treason. Nixon won the election and the Vietnam War dragged on until 1975 killing an additional 22,000 American troops and more than 1 million Vietnamese.

Nixon’s VP Spiro Agnew resigned rather than face prosecution for taking bribes and was replaced by Gerald Ford. He became president in 1974 when Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Ford was never elected.

Ronald Reagan was the next to commit treason to win the presidency.  During the 1980 election campaign President Jimmy Carter had finally reached a deal with the Iranian President to release 52 hostages held for nearly a year at the American Embassy in Tehran. Reagan made a clandestine deal with Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s radical faction, to keep the hostages until after the election. In return Reagan offered parts for the American weapons that Iran had purchased. This became known later as the Iran/Contra Scandal. Partly because of the hostages, Reagan won the election and the hostages were released the very minute Reagan was inaugurated.

George H. W. Bush was VP under Reagan and became president in 1988, defeating Michael Dukakis. There was no criminal trick involved in winning this election but he would never have been president without Reagan’s Contra deal (and Bush's racist Willie Horton ad no doubt helped). The Contra affair followed Bush Sr. into his presidency. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, member of the National Security Council Oliver North, and others were indicted and convicted on a number of charges. Bush, as VP at the time of the contra affair, was subpoenaed and could be facing prison. Bush’s Attorney General Bill Barr (yes THAT Bill Barr) suggested Bush pardon all the conspirators, thus ending the investigation.

George W. Bush was next in 2000 running against Al Gore. The election came down to who won in Florida and it was close. The first count had Bush over Gore by 537 votes out of 5.8 million. I mentioned in my February 26 post on election fraud how Bush’s brother, Florida Governor Jed Bush, had purged 57,000 mostly Black legitimate voters just before the election. There was also an issue about the confusing design of some of the ballots which favored Bush. A recount was underway on order of the Florida Supreme Court when Bush asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to stop it. The 5-4 vote on December 12 ended the count gaving Florida and the presidency to Bush. Justice Antonin Scalia’s son was a lawyer representing Bush in this trial  and Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife was working on the Bush transition team - neither Scalia or Thomas recused themselves from the case. A later recount by a group of newspapers found that Gore had actually won. Had Gore won, America would not have started two illegal wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and 9/11 may not have happened. And there would have been a lot more progress in slowing global warming.

Donald Trump is just the latest in a series of cheating Republican presidents. There was no big Republican scandal but several significant smaller ones that added up to a victory in 2016. The big scandal in 2016 was “Hillary Clinton’s emails”. The FBI had concluded there was no criminal intent but then just 11 days before the election FBI Director James Comey announced they were opening the case again (and dropped it again right after the election). Who pressured him to do that I wonder?

Russian interference was a big factor in the 2026 election as detailed in the Mueller report. Because Mueller did not find enough evidence to indict anyone, Barr made it sound like the report exonerated Trump, which it definitely did not. Most Republicans still believe that it wasn’t Russia but Ukraine interfering in the election; that story of course originated in Moscow. Without more voter purges Trump would not have been elected in either 2016 or 2024.

Hartmann wrote that article before the 2024 election but the guest post by Greg Palast in the January 24 2025 Hartmann Report argues that Trump would have lost in 2024 without the illegal voting purges and other tricks used by the Republicans.

None of these treasonous GOP presidents were ever held to account for their actions.

These illegitimate Republican presidents did a lot of damage to American democracy directly while in office. But their actions that have had the most long lasting damage was to appoint anti-democratic judges to the Supreme Court. I will outline their most damaging decisions of the past 45 years another day.

And if you are following the news at all, you will know that what Donald Trump is doing now is completely destroying what little of democracy is left in America.

Source:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/four-presidents

https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-c6f

Republican Family Values

Republicans like to claim they are the party that stands up for family values. I have an idea of what they think they mean by that – they oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage, sex education and teenage pregnancy, abortion, and crime. But how do their beliefs translate into real life?

Thom Hartmann in his June 28, 2023 Substack post compared statistics between “Red” and “Blue“ states. He showed (with links to supporting documents) that compared with Democratic controlled states, Republican controlled states had higher rates of:

·         Spousal abuse and spousal murder

·         Divorce

·         Rape

·         Teen pregnancy

·         Sexually transmitted diseases

·         Opiate addictions and deaths

·         Robbery and aggravated assault

·         Homicide

·         Gun deaths

·         Suicide

It appears from the statistics that the majority of people involved with the items on this list are Republican supporters. Do these statistics reflect their real family values?

Related to the above items are poverty related statistics. Again the following have higher rates in Republican controlled states:

·         High school dropouts

·         Unemployment

·         Unskilled workers

·         Bankruptcy and poverty

·         Child poverty

·         People on welfare

·         People on disability support

·         Homelessness

·         Income and wealth inequality

·         Smoking

·         Obesity

·         Unvaccinated people 

·         Death from Covid and other preventable diseases

·         Maternal and infant mortality

·         Contaminated air and water

Poverty and poor health go hand in hand. One could argue that smoking, obesity and being unvaccinated are also choices people make, so could go in the family values list. But they are also symptoms of poverty and low education.

This raises the chicken and egg question: Do these people support the Republican Party because they are poor or are they poor because they have a Republican government? I argue it’s both, in what’s known as a vicious circle.

Being poor and powerless makes them angry at the system, including all levels of government. And being poorly educated makes them easy victims of the Republican propaganda (Fox News, etc.) which tricks them into voting against their own interest.

Republican policies then contribute to their poverty while enriching the wealthy. A classic example are the ten Red states which, for ideological reasons, didn’t expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act leaving 1.6 million adults without health insurance. The last item in the list, air and water pollution, contributes significantly to poor health and is the result of government policies that allow the pollution, as well as the poverty which forces some people to live in it.

So next time you hear a Republican talking about their party's family values, ask if they mean values like rape, teen pregnancy, abortion, murder and suicide?

Source:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/do-republicans-worship-poverty-death

https://stateline.org/2024/07/19/in-the-10-states-that-didnt-expand-medicaid-1-6m-cant-afford-health-insurance/

How to Make America Great Again

Donald Trump’s campaign motto from the beginning in 2016 has been “Make America Great Again”. The red MAGA ball cap symbolizes his movement and identifies his followers.

But the questions remain unanswered and rarely asked. When was America great? In what ways was it great? And for whom was it great?

I want to suggest answers to these questions and another one: how can we really make America great again?

I propose that America was “great” during the 1950s, 60s and 70s when it had the largest and most prosperous middle class anywhere in the world and at any time in human history. It was “great” for the middle class working people, most without a college degree. It was “great” in that an adult without a college degree, by working hard and spending wisely, could buy a house, marry, raise children, go on family holidays, and send the kids to college, all with a single income. As anyone can tell you now that is no longer possible. What was different then and what would we need to do to bring it back?

·   Tax the wealthy. The highest personal tax bracket in 1960 was 91%. High taxes allowed America to pay down the national debt from WWII (which was similar in ratio to GDP to todays) while building infrastructure like schools, libraries, highways and bridges. A 90+% tax rate puts a ceiling on top management salaries forcing companies to invest their profits back into the business by paying workers more and doing more research.

·   Tax businesses. This includes closing all loopholes.

·   Consider adding or increasing capital gains, estate and wealth taxes

·   Make college free or at least affordable for all. The GI Bill that gave veterans a free college education was a huge factor in creating the prosperous middle class of those decades. College was funded about 90% by government, 10% by tuition. Those ratios have flipped.

·   Enforce antitrust laws to prevent or break up monopolies to make an even playing field for small and middle sized businesses to thrive

·   Make share buy-back illegal like it used to be. This business practice enriches the remaining shareholders while doing nothing to improve the business or its workers.

·   Unions need to be strong and supported by the government

·   Minimum wage needs to be sufficient for a single person to live on

·   Labor laws need must be strong and enforced.

·   Women, people of color, and other minorities need equal opportunites in the workforce

The MAGA Republicans are of course doing the exact opposite of what actually would make America great again (though arguable Trump is making America great again for billionaires, at least temporarily).

In order to achieve this, Americans will have to wrest power back from the oligarchs, and it won’t be easy. That’s a topic for another day, but here are a few of the things that would have to be done:

·   Make bribery of politicians illegal again so their allegiance is to the voters back home, not the billionaires who funded their campaign

·   Make elections free and fair (see yesterday’s post for problems to fix)

·   Clean up the corruption in the Supreme Court

·   Tighten the laws limiting executive authority

One factor making the goal I listed for a middle-class family (to buy a house, go on vacations etc.) more difficult is that expectations have risen and along with them the cost. Compare the size of houses built in the 1950s with new ones today. And houses are now filled with expensive appliances. Vacations were more modest at that time compared with today – camping in a tent or small trailer at a lake a few hours’ drive away, not a resort in Acapulco.

I just wrote all this off the top of my head so am likely missing some points. Please add your thoughts in the comments. I’ll add more links to relevant articles as I come across them.

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/sunday-review/middle-class-prosperity.html

https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-share-buyback-rape-of-american