The First Week
On this day in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded less than two minutes after takeoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The technical cause was simple - an O-ring on one of the boosters failed due to the cold weather. The organizational failure was far more complex. Experts knew about the potential issue with the rings long before the explosion. They warned about the danger just before the launch. They even refused to sign off on the safety of the launch. At each phase, the experts were overruled.
Nearly 40 years later, American society has seen a backlash against experts and expertise. (Tom Nichols has a fantastic book on this I cannot recommend enough for understanding how we got here.) In his first week in office, Donald Trump has done more to silence expert opinion than any president in history.
It is difficult to delve into the scope of just how much damage Donald Trump has done to the American government in just one week so forgive me for summarizing.
Numerous agencies have had spending frozen and leaders fired, often illegally. Specifically WHAT has been frozen has not been entirely clear as the White House has been issuing conflicting orders and statements. It is my opinion that they are backtracking on the worst offenses once they have seen the public backlash. Things like Medicaid would be covered under the language of the freeze, but the White House said Medicaid isn’t meant to be touched. Despite this, Medicaid payment portals were down nationwide today. The White House called this a glitch but I do not believe them. Far more likely they cut off the funding to a third party vital for keeping those portals online without realizing what they actually did.
The United States has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, shut down spending and communication at the National Institutes of Health, and stopped funds for worldwide aid groups such as Pepfar. Pepfar initially was blocked from distributing HIV medications, even if they had already been paid for. Marco Rubio announced this specific program would receive a waiver, but people who rely on HIV and AIDS medication from this program stopped receiving it. The World Health Organization is a key body in controlling infectious diseases around the world. Like the NIH, Donald Trump hates them because they contradicted his lies about the Covid-19 pandemic. The freeze at the NIH immediately halted conferences and meetings that were already in progress. No new ones or travel may be scheduled. The money NIH would normally be disbursing right now covers all manner of treatments for sick Americans and things like cancer research. Donald Trump halted that. Some of these programs have been allowed to continue since the initial freeze. I cannot stress enough that the orders coming from the White House are sloppy, poorly written, and contradictory.
Numerous other frozen programs resulted in the immediate termination of paychecks for people who rely on them. Thankfully, the government is now under a court order to continue spending these funds. Expect this issue to go to the Supreme Court.
The legal issue here is that Congress, via an explicit power in the Constitution, is in charge of government spending. Donald Trump and especially his OMB nominee Russel Vought believe in a concept called impoundment. In short, this is the idea that the president can stop any government spending mandated by Congress at any time for any reason. Aside from the Constitutional authority given to Congress re: spending, the United States has a law which directly and bluntly makes impoundment illegal. Trump and Vought do not believe it is Constitutional for Congress to restrict the president and will therefore fight this.
In another Constitutional showdown, Trump has fired the heads of numerous executive agencies and multiple inspectors general. The law requires a 30 day notice to Congress before firing any inspector general. The White House is openly saying they do not have to obey this law.
Every federal employee received an email asking them to resign. All of them. The Office of Personnel Management offered to let employees stay on until fall. Several media outlets have framed this as a “buyout” but it isn’t as Congress has not allocated funds for buyouts, and Trump can’t just spend money Congress has not allocated (any more than he can NOT spend money Congress has mandated). These emails are similar to ones Elon Musk sent out upon buying Twitter, asking employees to resign. They even have the same subject line. This is unsurprising if the reports of woefully unqualified people from Musk’s companies working for OPM are accurate.
In one of the most vile things I’ve ever seen from an elected politician, Senator Thom Tillis promised the sister of one of Pete Hegseth’s ex-wives that if she would sign a statement detailing Hegseth’s abuse of her sister, Tillis and other unnamed senators would vote against the confirmation. She did submit such a statement and then Tillis voted to confirm Hegseth. He lied to her.
Mike Johnson was warned that if Congress subpoenaed Cassidy Hutchinson’s texts, it would reveal sexually explicit messages from members of Congress. While we don’t know who these may have been from, we do know that Matt Gaetz showed nude images of women he says he slept with to other members of Congress - on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Stewart Rhodes received one of the harshest sentences for the 1/6/21 attack, getting convicted of seditious conspiracy, aka trying to carry out a coup. Rhodes appeared on stage with Trump at a rally in Las Vegas just a few days ago.
Donald Trump has long stated that California only suffers wildfires because of poor forest and water management. As an illustration of how little he understands about this subject, for nearly a decade he has said they merely need to “rake” the forests to prevent these fires. This is utter nonsense. He has also often said California is preventing water from reaching the southern portion of the state from northern California or even Oregon and Washington. Los Angeles is around 340 miles from San Jose, which is only midway to California’s border with Oregon. There is no river between them which means there is no means of transporting the MASSIVE amounts of water needed to contain a wildfire from other parts of the state. There are no places on the planet with enough water in reserve to extinguish fires of this size. Nevertheless, Trump just claimed credit for “turning on” the water in California via the United States military. No such thing happened. California’s Department of Water resources has had to clarify that the federal government turned some pumping stations back on which had been offline for routine scheduled maintenance. These stations serve northern farmland and have nothing at all to do with the water supply near Los Angeles. While musing about the horrors of giving aid to California without demanding stricter voter ID laws (yes, really), Trump said he was considering eliminating FEMA entirely so that states can handle their own disaster response. The entire reason FEMA exists is that most states, and especially red states, do not possess the resources to deal with multi-billion dollar disasters.
The White House has begun issuing statements directly linking to Trump’s posts on Truth Social. Truth Social is a publicly traded company whose majority shareholder is Donald Trump. He is using the government to directly promote his own business which would have been a massive scandal before 2016.
We nearly entered a trade war with Colombia over their demand that the US treat deportees humanely.
The government of Colombia was appalled that we were sending deportees to their country on military aircraft in handcuffs. We were sending immigrants to Colombia on massive C-130’s costing around 8 times as much as a chartered plane. The immigrants were placed in handcuffs despite not being criminals. (Despite the constant claims by the White House that any undocumented immigrant is a criminal, being here without documentation is merely a civil infraction.)
This escalated very quickly with the Colombian president posting a long essay about not bowing to the United States after Trump threatened massive tariffs. Later that evening, Trump declared victory and said Colombia had agreed to all of his terms. He lied. Flights resumed but the planes were COLOMBIAN planes picking up deportees. Echoing the extreme incompetence of his first administration, the White House misspelled “Colombia” in their press release about Colombia.
Trump has once again banned transgender members of the military. This ban directly says that transgender people are not “honorable, truthful, and disciplined.” This is a great time to point out Donald Trump is a four time draft dodger who attacks POWs and said not getting an STD during the 1970s was his own personal Vietnam. This new ban is already facing a court challenge by transgender members of the military. He has also signed an EO purporting to ban healthcare for gender related issues for anyone under the age of 19. While he cannot directly tell a doctor what to do, the order targets any groups receiving any funding from the federal government, which is a huge number of hospitals and medical practices.
One week in and all of our fears about what a second Trump administration would look like have already begun to happen. He has declared war on the US government, anyone promoting diversity, and transgender people. There is reason to hope however as he is already facing numerous lawsuits over actions taken just this week. Not all of those will win, but some of them will and even the cases that ultimately lose will delay him, if only for a bit.
I close tonight with the words of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, standing up to a bully and showing the world how to deal with Donald Trump:
Trump, I don’t like traveling to the U.S. much, it’s a bit boring, but I confess there are worthy things. I like to go to the Black neighborhoods of Washington. There, I saw a whole fight in the capital of the U.S. between Blacks and Latinos, with barricades, which seemed to me like nonsense, because they should unite.
I confess that I like Walt Whitman, Paul Simon, Noam Chomsky, and Miller.
I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, in the history of the U.S., are memorable and I follow them. They were murdered for being labor leaders with the electric chair by the fascists who are inside the U.S. just as they are in my country.
I don’t like your oil, Trump, you are going to end the human species with greed. Maybe one day, along with a drink of whisky—which I accept despite my gastritis—we can talk frankly about this, but it’s difficult because you consider me an inferior race, and I am not, nor is any Colombian.
So if you are looking for a stubborn person, that’s me, period. You can try to stage a coup with your economic power and arrogance, like you did with Allende. But I will die by my law, I withstood torture, and I resist you. I don’t want slave owners on Colombia’s side, we already had many and we freed ourselves. Who I want to be on Colombia’s side are lovers of freedom. If you can’t join me, I will go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world, and you didn’t understand it. This is the land of the yellow butterflies, the beauty of Remedios, but also of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, one of whom I am, perhaps the last.
You will kill me, but I will survive in my town, which came before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea, and freedom.
You don’t like our freedom, fine. I do not shake hands with white slave owners. I shake the hands of libertarian whites, heirs of Lincoln, and of the Black and white rural boys from the U.S., in front of whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking through the mountains of Tuscany and after saving myself from COVID.
They are the US, and before them, I kneel, before no one else.
Overthrow me president, and the Americas and humanity will respond.
Colombia, now stop looking to the north, look to the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization of that time, from the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood carries the resistant Black people who were turned into slaves by you. In Colombia lies the first free territory of the Americas, before Washington, of all the Americas, I take refuge there in their African songs.
My land is of the goldsmiths that existed in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, and of the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.
You will never dominate us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, and who is called Bolívar, opposes you.
Our peoples are somewhat fearful, somewhat shy, they are naive and kind, lovers, but they will know how to win back the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all over Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, now Panama, before Colombia, whom you murdered.
I raise a flag, and as Gaitán said, even if I am alone, it will remain raised with Latin American dignity, which is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather didn’t know, but mine did, Mr. President, immigrant in the US.
Your blockade does not scare me because Colombia, in addition to being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know you love beauty as I do, don’t disrespect it, and it will offer you its sweetness.
COLOMBIA FROM NOW ON FACES THE WHOLE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE, AND HUMANITY.
I have been informed that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruit of our human labor to enter the US, I will do the same.
Let our people plant corn, which was discovered in Colombia, and feed the world.
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