- The big news today was the contentious meeting at the White House between Trump, Vance, and Zelensky, which signals an abandonment of US foreign policy as a leader of the free world and a signal that Trump is aligning the US to the world’s dictators… moving to the dark side. Is that what Trump voters voted for?
- Conservatives, apparently not understanding the concept of “an ounce of prevention…” are cutting the NOAA, funding to prevent diseases, and research in Antarctica;
- And as in any good Orwellian authoritarian society, there’s a list of forbidden words that are not allowed in any government-funded research or on any government websites. I found a complete list. It’s quite a list.
How much worse can it get? It’s still getting worse. Today the president and vice-president bullied a former US ally, in the White House, in favor of siding with the Russian dictator Putin.
NY Times, 28 Feb 2025: Trump Administration Live Updates: Trump and Vance Berate Zelensky, Exposing Break Between Wartime Allies
This URL is a live update feed and may show something different later today. Here’s the summary lead at the moment.
The U.S. relationship with Ukraine erupted in a storm of acrimony on Friday as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in an explosive televised Oval Office showdown and abruptly cut short a visit meant to coordinate a plan for peace.
In a fiery public confrontation unlike any seen between an American president and foreign leader in modern times, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance castigated Mr. Zelensky for not being grateful enough for U.S. support in its war with Russia, and sought to strong-arm him into making a peace deal on whatever terms the Americans dictated.
I gather that Trump doesn’t care about Zelensky or Ukraine (or political alliances) at all; he’s increasingly swaying his support to the dictators of the world. Then, apparently, he realized he could make some “deal” with Zelensky and acquire some of the substantial rare-earth minerals that lie in Ukrainian soil, and pressure (or extort) Zelensky into handing them over the US as ‘payment’ for earlier US support for Ukraine in response to Putin’s invasion three years ago. A key element here is that Trump doesn’t care about political alliances; he sees political alliances as a way to extort wealth.
The new is everywhere today, e.g. CNN: Trump orders Zelensky out of White House after angry exchange, subtitled “Never before has an American president berated his visitor like Trump did to Zelensky”
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The first commentary I saw about this was from Thomas L. Friedman, who captures the significance of this event.
NY Times, Thomas L. Friedman, 28 Feb 2025: This Never Happened With an American President Before [gift link]
What happened in the Oval Office on Friday — the obviously planned ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.
…
It is hard to express what a break this is in American foreign policy. We stood on the side of liberty and those fighting for it around the world. There are times the isolationist forces in our population have held us back and had to be persuaded. There have been times when — in support of the larger cause of liberty — against dangerous foes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, we had to align ourselves temporarily with dictators.But I can’t think of a single time when an American president declared that the democratically elected leader of a country preserving liberty was a “dictator” who started the war with his neighbor — when it was the vicious neighboring dictator who actually started the war.
… All that matters [to Trump] is that Zelensky says “thank you” louder for our altruism and that, in the middle of his war of survival, sign over a generation of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to us.
This is a total perversion of U.S. foreign policy practiced by every president since World War I. My fellow Americans, we are in completely uncharted waters, led by a president, who — well, I cannot believe he is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV.
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Then there was this…
The Atlantic, David Frum, 28 Feb 2025: At Least Now We Know the Truth, subtitled “It’s ugly, but necessary to face.” [also a gift link]
At least the Oval Office meeting held by President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was held in front of the cameras. False friendliness in public by Trump and Vance, followed by behind-the-scenes treachery, would have been much more dangerous to the Ukrainian cause.
Instead, Trump and Vance have revealed to Americans and to America’s allies their alignment with Russia, and their animosity toward Ukraine in general and its president in particular. The truth is ugly, but it’s necessary to face it.
Today’s meeting gave the lie to any claim that this administration’s policy is driven by any strategic effort to advance the interests of the United States, however misguided. Trump and Vance displayed in the Oval Office a highly personal hatred. There was no effort here to make a case for American interests. Vance complained that Zelensky had traveled to Pennsylvania to thank U.S. ammunition workers, because, Vance charged, the appearance amounted to campaigning for the Democratic presidential ticket. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump angrily explained. “He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Both the president and vice president showed the U.S.-led alliance system something it needed urgently to know: The national-security system of the West is led by two men who cannot be trusted to defend America’s allies—and who deeply sympathize with the world’s most aggressive dictator.
The bigger picture:
We’re witnessing the self-sabotage of the United States. “America First” always meant America alone, a predatory America whose role in the world is no longer based on democratic belief. America voted at the United Nations earlier this week against Ukraine, siding with Russia and China against almost all of its fellow democracies. Is this who Americans want to be? For this is what America is being turned into.
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Is this what you voted for, Trump fans? How does it feel to know you’ve helped move the United States over the dark side?
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In the name of shrinking budget, the Trump administration is throwing out basic safety and preventative measures that, eventually, will cost the nation far more. Why don’t conservatives understand this?? You know, an ounce of prevention…
LA Times, 27 Feb 2025: Mass firings across National Weather Service, NOAA ignite fury among scientists worldwide
As federal job eliminations strike the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, scientists and environmental advocates are denouncing the cuts, saying they could cause real harm to Americans.
About 5% of NOAA employees stationed around the U.S. — approximately 650 staffers — received a termination email Thursday, according to White House and Congressional officials. The cuts shrank teams across all facets of the climate-focused agency, from experts working on weather forecasting, ocean health, climate change, fisheries and developments in space and the atmosphere.
And
NY Times, 27 Feb 2025: Mass Layoffs Begin at NOAA, With Hundreds Said to Be Fired in One Day, subtitled “The cuts came just before a separate wave of departures was expected under the Trump administration’s so-called deferred resignation program.”
The Trump administration has begun firing employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world’s premier centers for climate science.
…“This loss of talent at NOAA is going to set the agency back years and compromise the integrity of missions that directly support human health and safety, economic prosperity and national security,” the analyst said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “This is not a move toward efficiency; it’s a move toward putting Americans in danger every day.”
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And, Make Diseases Great Again!
NY Times, 27 Feb 2025: U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World, subtitled “Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.” [gift link via JMG]
This is USAID fallout.
Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department in Washington around the world, landing in inboxes for refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects and thousands of other organizations that received crucial funding from the United States for lifesaving work.
“This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government,” they began.
…
“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”
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More about climate science.
The Atlantic, Ross Andersen, 28 Feb 2025: The Golden Age of Antarctic Science May Be Ending, subtitled “The Trump administration is sabotaging the country’s gold-standard climate science in Antarctica and around the world.”
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And about MAGA’s Orwellian attack on free speech (despite, of course, their veneration of the Constitution, which they either don’t understand or believe in).
NY Times, The Editorial Board, 28 Feb 2025: The MAGA War on Speech
President Trump and many of his supporters — from tech leaders like Elon Musk to populist politicians like Vice President JD Vance — have spent the past several years portraying themselves as free-speech crusaders. Capitalizing on the censorial strains of the left, they regularly lecture about the necessity of letting people say whatever they want, even if it’s hateful, asinine or corrosive.
That form of free-speech absolutism, which aims to defend not just favored speech but also disfavored speech, has a long and welcome role in American society. The problem is that for all their bluster, these supposed free-speech crusaders have proved themselves consistently intolerant when it comes to words, ideas and perspectives they disagree with.
With many examples of websites removed, books pulled, and national park plaques revised, if they contain any of the words on the administration’s forbidden list.
I found a clean list of those many words here, at Gizmodo: The List of Trump’s Forbidden Words That Will Get Your Paper Flagged at NSF, subtitled “It’s fascism, plain and simple.”
(NSF is the National Science Foundation.) And so I will close for this evening by copying the entire list. These are the ideas, the concepts, the kinds of people, that the Trump administration doesn’t want you to hear about, or to know even exist. Because America is great again, as it was when it was a monoculture of white Christians, and everyone else is not to be seen or acknowledged. Welcome to white-bread America.
- activism
- activists
- advocacy
- advocate
- advocates
- barrier
- barriers
- biased
- biased toward
- biases
- biases towards
- bipoc
- black and latinx
- community diversity
- community equity
- cultural differences
- cultural heritage
- culturally responsive
- disabilities
- disability
- discriminated
- discrimination
- discriminatory
- diverse backgrounds
- diverse communities
- diverse community
- diverse group
- diverse groups
- diversified
- diversify
- diversifying
- diversity and inclusion
- diversity equity
- enhance the diversity
- enhancing diversity
- equal opportunity
- equality
- equitable
- equity
- ethnicity
- excluded
- female
- females
- fostering inclusivity
- gender
- gender diversity
- genders
- hate speech
- excluded
- female
- females
- fostering inclusivity
- gender
- gender diversity
- genders
- hate speech
- hispanic minority
- historically
- implicit bias
- implicit biases
- inclusion
- inclusive
- inclusiveness
- inclusivity
- increase diversity
- increase the diversity
- indigenous community
- inequalities
- inequality
- inequitable
- inequities
- institutional
- Igbt
- marginalize
- marginalized
- minorities
- minority
- multicultural
- polarization
- political
- prejudice
- privileges
- promoting diversity
- race and ethnicity
- racial
- racial diversity
- racial inequality
- racial justice
- racially
- racism
- sense of belonging
- sexual preferences
- social justice
- sociocultural
- socioeconomic
- status
- stereotypes
- systemic
- trauma
- under appreciated
- under represented
- under served
- underrepresentation
- underrepresented
- underserved
- undervalued
- victim
- women
- women and underrepresented
