The U.S. House of Representatives this past week passed Trump's comprehensive tax and spend bill that provides for major cuts in domestic spending programs. The Senate is now considering the bill, and opposition from some Senate Republicans portend a major battle ahead. Advocates are bracing for potential cuts to Georgia’s safety net programs
Excerpts from the Georgia Recorder:
Question from a Vietnam combat veteran to Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) & staffers Rob & Ashley Adkerson, Nick Petromelis, Ashleigh Padgett: now that you endorse this additional denigration of a veteran, after you
to what lower level of hypocrisy can you descend, after demonstrating you put sucking up to Trump ahead of taking care of veterans?
Kremlin Says U.S. Foreign Policy Shift Aligns with Its Own Vision
Key moment Georgia Republican infuriated town hall
FULL STORY from Georgia Recorder
EXCERPTS:
Question to Rep. Barry Loudermilk and all the other Republican U.S. Representatives from Georgia: What are you doing about this? So far as I can determine, absolutely nothing. Your being a Trump lapdog means more to you than the welfare of Georgia farmers.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk, abetted by the Republican Party, are waging a war against the Constitution and the rule of law. Their goal is to jettison America's basic moral and democratic values and transform the presidency into a presidential dictatorship. Their role models are Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban (Hungary), and Kim Jung Un (North Korea)--murderous dictators Trump has highly praised. The following provides a selective list of the analyses that lay bare the Trump/Musk/Republican goal to destroy American democracy.
The Constitutional Crisis Is Here
-Donald Trump has delegated the task of neutering the congressional spending authority laid out in Article I of the Constitution, could hardly be more obvious about his intentions if he rode into Washington on a horse trailed by Roman legions.
-If Congress won’t stop Donald Trump and Elon Musk from arrogating its power over federal spending, who will?
The gutting of American institutions has led to Trump gutting America itself
-Trump’s wholesale dismissal of inspector generals violates the law
-The dismissals sit alongside a much broader disruption in how the country is governed. A range of spending freezes have been implemented, for example, again likely in violation of the law.
-Systems that have been unaffected by past presidential transitions this time find themselves interrupted and likely reconsidered, a sharp disruption of how the government works.
Democracy under siege as Trump's reign of terror begins
-On the first day of his reign of terror, the sick, vengeful king released 1,500 dangerous thugs, who beat the life out of cops and tried to set fire to our country, by violently stopping the certification of our election.
-We simply cannot survive this obscene level of anti-democratic lawlessness from the fascist White House, and that makes it incredibly important how this moment in history is framed for the public.
What Trump's unconstitutional executive orders are really meant to do
-After repeatedly claiming that he has “nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump has signed warp speed executive orders to effectuate Project 2025.
-Project 2025 seeks to advance Trump’s authoritarian vision for America.
-Trump is reaching for an unprecedented expansion of his own power, and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court may very well assist.
The Constitution is collapsing. A lack of character is to blame.
-The Founders would not have envisioned a Congress so supine in the face of Trump’s barrage.
NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
-The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
Ex-CIA official says Trump created 'a counterterrorism nightmare'
-…a retired CIA official with 26 years in the agency behind him, took a hammer to Donald Trump's proposal to assume control of Gaza while forcing out the current inhabitants.
-Trump’s words about removing the Palestinians from Gaza and assuming political control “are triggering mechanisms for Islamic extremist groups."
The GOP’s meek acquiescence to Trump’s power grabs
They aren’t fighting Trump even when he tramples on their prerogatives and past ideals, cementing the party’s more autocratic turn.
A collection of recent reports of Trump's subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law.
-Trump’s wholesale dismissal of inspector generals violates the law
-The dismissals sit alongside a much broader disruption in how the country is governed. A range of spending freezes have been implemented, for example, again likely in violation of the law.
-Systems that have been unaffected by past presidential transitions this time find themselves interrupted and likely reconsidered, a sharp disruption of how the government works.
-On the first day of his reign of terror, the sick, vengeful king released 1,500 dangerous thugs, who beat the life out of cops and tried to set fire to our country, by violently stopping the certification of our election.
-We simply cannot survive this obscene level of anti-Democratic lawlessness from the fascist White House, and that makes it incredibly important how this moment in history is framed for the public.
-Trump has gone all 19th century on us. He seems to find in this period everything he likes: tariffs, Manifest Destiny, seizing land from weaker nations, mercantilism, railroads, manufacturing and populism.
-…the movement Trump leads today…a band of arrivistes, establishment-haters, money-seekers and unreconstructed nationalists.
-The problem with populism and the whole 19th-century governmental framework is that it didn’t work.
(TO BE CONTINUED!)
On January 10 the judge in Trump's hush money case reached a decision making Trump a convicted felon. He had been found guilty in May of falsifying business records. The judge decided "out of respect for the presidency" to give Trump an unconditional discharge, allowing him to go free without serving any time in jail.
In nine years of bring a politician, Trump, by his own words and deeds, has proven he is a congenital liar, a criminal, and a rapist. He stole classified files in the biggest breach of our national security in our country's history. He incited an insurrection. He wants to tear up the Constitution. He is a classic narcissist, loyal to no one but himself, and totally lacking a moral conscience or empathy. He has repudiated the rule of law by calling those who participated in the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection “patriots,” and stating his intention to pardon any of them found guilty in a court of law. He spews character assassination and insults with reckless abandonment. He has wrecked the lives of ordinary Americans and destroyed the careers of some for simply telling the truth about him.
Simple Google searches will provide the evidence backing up every word in that paragraph above. But there is an even simpler, quicker way to get a comprehensive summary of Trump’s own words that reveal him to be an immoral cretin. Read my report: “The Republican Screed: What It Takes to be a Republican, According to Donald Trump.” Trump actually escalated his malicious diatribes in the closing days of his campaign.
You would have thought Trump’s reputation as an immoral cretin had been signed, sealed, and delivered. But not surprisingly, an apologia for Trump is already underway. Some of its propagators have given it an additional twist by claiming that Democrats treated Trump with false charges and extremist rhetoric.
Not surprisingly, the mainstream media—the same instruments that back in 2015-16 fueled the political career of the novice Trump with tons of free publicity—are in the forefront of the apologia crowd. Their poster boy has to be Shadi Hamid, author of a Washington Post column on November 25, “Why the Resistance Went Quiet After Trump’s Victory: The fight against supposed fascism is not much of a fight, and that’s a good thing.” Hamid tells us that the criticism of Trump’s malicious lies, insults, and personal attacks—much less calling him a fascist—was wildly exaggerated, alarmist language. Some excerpts:
In my opinion, this is one of the worst commentaries the Post has ever published. The headline prepares the reader to for comments centered on Trump’s explicitly pro-authoritarian, anti-democratic, violence-inciting statements. But any reference to Trump’s drumbeat of extremist diatribes quickly disappears, and Hamid launches attacks on virtually the whole of the Democratic agenda.
The first four paragraphs of the article—summarized in my first three bullet points—are an insult to honest journalism. They reach new heights of obfuscation. Hamid actually mocks the proudest legacy the Democrats led by Biden and Harris bequeathed America: the peaceful transfer of power. His depiction of their adherence to the law and tradition as “a dishonorable surrender” and a “sudden softening” of their position on Trump’s extremism is a disgrace.
Hamid seems to admire the opposite approach taken by Trump and the Republicans in 2020-2021, when they showed their contempt for the Constitution, the rule of law, & democracy, by falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen, and unleashed an attack on the Capitol and used other criminal acts to try to overturn the lawful results.
In the Post’s comment section on Hamid’s article, LJWALKER offered this eloquent statement:
New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of the last real American conservatives with a prominent platform, has also taken a stand on the apologia cabal arguing for dropping the denunciation of Trump’s lying racist, xenophobic, misogynistic diatribes and treating him as a normal person. Excerpts from Brook’s article “The Moral Challenge of Trumpism:”
Brooks quotes another prominent observer of American morals, David Linker, from his recent Substack essay:
“Trumpism is seeking to advance a revolutionary transvaluation of values by inverting the morality that undergirds both traditional conservatism and liberal institutionalism. In this inversion, norms and rules that counsel and enforce propriety, restraint and deference to institutional authority become vices, while flouting them become virtues.”