[draft]
Still rainy, still with cold, sleeping half the day it seems, reading a bit. I roused myself about two hours ago and here’s what I came up with.
- Heather Cox Richardson on the obvious: that Republicans are letting an un-elected billionaire run the government;
- Why Trump is shutting down USAID;
- And withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council;
- And wants to “clean out” Gaza;
- How the coup is deleting data it doesn’t like;
- And how if what’s happening here happened in any other country, we’d be calling it a coup.
Here’s what I think is a key point. There are always people like Trump, in every society, and their followers. They are driven by base human nature tribal values. Disregard for anyone outside their tribe, in this case white men, who say out loud that people of other races, and women, cannot be trusted. The question now is whether our American society, built on Constitutional principles designed to overcome those prejudices and claim equality, can survive someone like Trump. And it seems increasingly uncertain that that can happen.
\\\
Let’s start with a summary from Heather for today.
Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson: February 3, 2025
I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.
But they are not doing that.
Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.
The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.
It’s almost like Republicans don’t believe in, or understand, the US system of government.
But Republicans are allowing Musk to run amok. This could be because they know that Trump has embraced the idea that the American government is a “Deep State,” but that the extreme cuts the MAGA Republicans say they want are actually quite unpopular with Americans in general, and even with most Republican voters. By letting Musk make the cuts the MAGA base wants, they can both provide those cuts and distance themselves from them.
But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.
At least some of the Democrats are speaking up, but only through legal means. What else can they do? Play the Republicans’ game?
\\
The worldview of Trump, and Republicans apparently, is insular, selfish, and irresponsible.
Slate, Fred Kaplan, 3 Feb 2025: Why It’s a Huge Deal That Trump Is Trying to Shut Down USAID
So, what is going on here? What does Trump have against USAID? And why does USAID have a room full of highly classified information?
USAID was created in 1961 through an act of Congress proposed by President John F. Kennedy to consolidate all U.S. foreign-aid programs in one quasi-independent agency. Then and now, it runs or funds thousands of programs in food aid, disaster relief, technical and financial assistance, environmental protection, and long-term socioeconomic development. It also has special departments to promote democracy.
Its spending allotment for this year, $31 billion, amounts to just half of 1 percent of the total federal budget. Yet it is the principal instrument for U.S. “soft power” and has done much, over the decades, to mold America’s image—to the extent it has one—as a beneficent country.
Bottom line:
There’s the problem in a nutshell: As Trump has demonstrated in the first two weeks of his return to the White House, more than ever, the president is no fan of “soft power.” Nor does his concept of “America First” include the notion of helping foreigners in need. Some may view foreign aid as enlightened self-interest; Trump sees it as a game for suckers.
Trump also doesn’t care for USAID’s pro-democracy activities. Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA and a forthcoming sequel, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century, thinks that Trump and Musk want to destroy USAID “because it promotes democracy in nations like Hungary”—a source of huge annoyance to Viktor Orbán, one of Trump’s favorite foreign leaders and Hungary’s autocratic prime minister.
Trump is not on America’s side.
\\
On the same matter.
Vox, Dylan Matthews, 4 Feb 2025: The worst thing Trump has done so far, subtitled “Tens of thousands of people will die if Trump’s war on USAID continues.”
\\
Nor is he on the side of human rights. He’s out only for himself.
NPR, 4 Feb 2025: Trump withdraws the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council
Why? Perhaps to show support for Israel, as the subtitle here suggests.
Politico, 3 Feb 2025: US to again withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council, stop UNRWA funding, subtitled “The actions come one day before Trump is set to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.”
Don’t Palestinians have rights too? Apparently not.
CNN, 27 Jan 2025: Trump wants to ‘clean out’ Gaza. Here’s what this could mean for the Middle East
About two and a half months ago, I wrote a piece about what foreign aid might look like in the second Trump term.
…
We are now in that incredibly dark reality. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) became one of the first targets of the Trump administration, starting with an Inauguration Day executive order freezing aid programs for 90 days. This was impoundment in action, the usurpation of the power of the purse from Congress.
The article notes,
Foreign aid has never been popular, and while some of that is perhaps due to misunderstandings of what “foreign aid” means, most Americans just generally don’t like helping people in other countries. (It doesn’t help that past surveys have shown that the average American thinks the US spends a quarter or more of its total budget on foreign aid — the real figure is less than 1 percent.)
Because what USAID has done includes saving 50,000 lives from malaria every year, and saving a million-plus lives from HIV/AIDS. But those are all foreigners, and so Elon Musk, in this case, doesn’t care. And Trump says, fine!
\\
The coup is deleting data it doesn’t like.
Slate, Lizzie O’Leary, 4 Feb 2025: Unfortunately, the Economy Runs On the Data Trump Is Trying to Delete, subtitled “The gutting of government statistics is a recipe for chaos.”
On Friday, at 8:29 a.m., markets across the world will slow what they’re doing to wait for data—specifically, the monthly jobs report, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases at 8:30 a.m. It’s not an exaggeration to say that trillions of dollars (U.S. equity markets alone are worth $62 trillion) turn on what the BLS says. The stock market, bond market, and Federal Reserve act and react based on this report.
But Friday’s release, which covers the month of January, also has the unfortunate distinction of relying in part on government data that was taken offline this week and is, as of this writing, inaccessible to the public. Economists, business owners, and even everyday people are entitled to understand the full picture of who lives and works in this country, and the Trump administration just made that harder.
Allow me to wonk out for a moment here. The report is technically called the Employment Situation, and it’s a monthly picture of who was hired, who was fired, what race and gender they are, which sectors they work in, what education they completed, even whether they could find only part-time work that month. The BLS collects data in two ways: from employers and from households. And once a year, it revises that data based on a bunch of different factors (I’m grossly simplifying), including details on the U.S. population according to census data. That is the report we’re expecting Friday—a 30,000-foot view of the American population and labor force over the year. And this week, census.gov went offline, to try to comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders on gender and sex, diversity, and foreign aid. (The main census site is back now, but not all the census datasets are.)
Bottom line:
But here’s the thing about casting subtler doubt on data, making it hard to find, or removing it wholesale. It could quietly erode the very foundations of our economy—and our trust in public agencies. “There are many ways to undermine trust in public data if that were someone’s goal,” said Kolko. “Depriving the federal agencies of money, encouraging their staff to quit—these are all ways that could end up undermining trust in public data.” And that should worry us all.
We’re doomed.
\\\
Once again, in any other country….
Slate, Dahlia Lithcwick and Mark Joseph Stern, 4 Feb 2025: Elon Musk’s Power Grab Is Lawless, Dangerous, and—Yes—a Coup, subtitled “If this were happening in any other country, we’d be calling it a coup.”
The federal government is currently under relentless and unlawful assault by a man no one elected to lead it. With Donald Trump’s blessing and enabling, Elon Musk and his confederates have laid siege to the executive branch in an onslaught whose appalling and far-reaching consequences have barely begun to be reported, much less understood. Musk’s team is tearing through federal agencies at a shocking clip, gaining access to classified material, private personal information, and payment systems that distribute trillions of dollars every year, all in alleged breach of the law. The richest person in the world, who works for no recognizable government entity and answers to nobody, apparently believes he has unilateral authority to withhold duly appropriated funds, violate basic security protocols protecting state secrets, and abolish a global agency in direct contravention of Congress’ explicit command. He is reportedly leading a purge of the federal workforce, persecuting life-saving charities, and pushing out principled civil servants who stand in the way of his rampage.
What we are witnessing is an unconstitutional seizure of power unfolding so rapidly that, by design, the public and media cannot keep up. Musk, who spent nearly $300 million to get Trump elected, is now attempting to restructure the government around his own whims, vendettas, and obsessions. He is, in effect, serving as co-president without winning a single vote, as the actual president looks on from the sidelines. Musk seems to reject basic aspects of the nation’s constitutional democracy, replacing the separation of powers with the rule of an autocrat. Many of his offensives appear to reject the legitimacy of any legal limitations that stand in his way, treating federal statutes and precedents as mere suggestions he can take or leave at will.
\
I saw a Facebook post, just a casual observations, that said people living in a dictatorship go on about their daily lives much the way people in democracies do. It’s only when options begin to disappear — certain services no longer available, certain books no longer for sale or in public libraries — that anyone might notice. And most people won’t notice.
But in the history of the world, the dictatorships are dead ends. The cultures that encourage diversity and exploration expand humanity’s reach, and understanding, and control. And move humanity forward. Yet most people don’t care.
