"The U.S. President Is Quietly Killing So Many Lives" - Holding Trump To Account For The Chaos, Disruptions, Recklessness And Malevolence

We need to keep fighting The Unacceptable 4 - Gabbard, Kennedy, Patel, Vought

Morning/Afternoon all. If Donald Trump has a superpower it has been the evasion of responsibility for the bad things he’s done in his life. Yesterday he blamed Biden, Obama, Pete Buttigieg, DEI for the 67 dead in the Potomac. Deflect, blame others, rinse, repeat. So let’s be clear about a few things today:

Trump Is Trying To Break The US Government And Owns All The Troubles That Come From It - Trump’s savage attack on the day to day operations of our government will result in many, many bad things to happen. The 67 dead in the Potomac are an example. He has gutted the leadership of our government’s aviation security and has waged a war against rank and file employees of the government including air traffic controllers. When things fail like they did this week outside of Reagan National Airport we must hold the President to account. He is literally trying to break things now and when they break there is one person to blame and it sure isn’t Mr or Mrs DEI.

It is possible those outside of DC don’t understand the scale and scope of the purges happening at senior levels of every department and agency right now. Incredible knowledge, expertise and operational capacity are being lost. The entire National Security Council career staff, for example, was just sent home last week. They are disabling the ability of the US government to carry out its daily responsibilities.

Trump’s Economic Agenda Is Causing Prices To Rise For Everyone. Tariffs Will Raise Them Even Further - As we discussed with Rob Shapiro earlier this week the President’s proposed economic policies will raise prices for everyone, re-ignite inflation, raise taxes on middle class Americans, cut benefit programs that will cause costs to rise on a wide variety of services including health care and provide extraordinary tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. As Rob explained to us the tariffs Trump may implement tomorrow are a national sales tax on an incredible array of goods including food, oil and gas, wood and other construction products. Prices on all these things will rise significantly, immediately, perhaps as early as tomorrow, and further fuel inflation.

Trump’s inflationary agenda is already re-igniting inflation. From Reuters this morning, Key US inflation measure posts largest monthly gain since April:

U.S. inflation increased by the most in eight months in December amid a surge in consumer spending, suggesting the Federal Reserve would probably be in no hurry to resume cutting interest rates soon.

Other data on Friday showed labor costs rose in the fourth quarter as wages edged up. Price pressures picked up in the fourth quarter, stalling the progress in lowering inflation.

We all need to be very clear that Trump has no plan to lower prices and costs. Regardless of his rhetoric his plan actually seeks to raise prices and costs, not lower them, and here we are - inflation and costs are rising for every American, already.

Mass Deportation Will Raise Prices For Americans, Disrupt Our Businesses and Slow Growth - As we discussed with David Leopold last week Trump’s mass deportation plan is going to remove millions of workers from our labor force at a time of historically low employment. This will cause our companies to lose long-time productive employees; make it far harder for all companies to hire and grow; prices will rise for food, health care, day care, restaurants, hotels and many, many other items; families and communities will be shattered. All of this contribute to re-igniting inflation, ensuring the Fed does not lower interest rates, keeping mortgages and borrowing costs for all companies and Americans at elevated levels, slowing growth and worsening the cost of living crisis in America. It will also have this effect, via Hopium community member Catherine G:

My daughter-in-law is a prosecutor. Victims of crime and witnesses are now not showing up for court dates and/or preparation because they are afraid ICE will seize them at the court house. That means cases can't be prosecuted and that means criminals stay free to commit more crimes. Party of law and order my sweet Aunt Annie.

The savage treatment of the migrants we are sending back, the bullying of countries to accept them, the levying of tariffs on our closest allies, the threat or actual seizure of land from sovereign nations/allies will turn America into a rogue nation, a pariah state, and make us a far less safe and successful nation.

Life Saving Aid Programs, Medical Research, Clinical Trials, Public Health Programs Are Still Turned Off - It’s possible that the most dangerous actions Trump has taken so far involve a wide array of programs whose funding remains stolen/frozen. Here is a new NYTimes story today that suggests the cut off of foreign aid programs could result in millions of people dying around the world in the coming months, How The World Is Reeling From Trump’s Aid Freeze:

In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.

In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced.

n a matter of days, Mr. Trump’s order to freeze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has intensified humanitarian crises and raised profound questions about America’s reliability and global standing.

“Everyone is freaking out,” Atif Mukhtar of the Emergency Response Rooms, a local volunteer group in the besieged Sudanese capital, Khartoum, said of the aid freeze.

Soon after announcing the cut off, the Trump administration abruptly switched gears. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that “life-saving humanitarian assistance” could continue, offering a respite for what he called “core” efforts to provide food, medicine, shelter and other emergency needs.

But he stressed that the reprieve was “temporary in nature,” with limited exceptions. Beyond that, hundreds of senior officials and workers who help distribute American aid had already been fired or put on leave, and many aid efforts remain paralyzed around the world.

Most of the soup kitchens in Khartoum, the battle-torn capital of Sudan, have shut down. Until last week, the United States was the largest source of money for the volunteer-run kitchens that fed 816,000 people there.

“For most people, it’s the only meal they get,” said Hajooj Kuka, a spokesman for the Emergency Response Rooms, describing Khartoum as a city “on the edge of starvation.”

After the American money was frozen last week, some of the aid groups that channel those funds to the food kitchens said they were unsure if they were allowed to continue. Others cut off the money completely. Now, 434 of the 634 volunteer kitchens in the capital have shut down, Mr. Kuka said.

“And more are going out of service every day,” he added.

Many of the aid workers, doctors and people in need who rely on American aid are now reckoning with their relationship with the United States and the message the Trump administration is sending: America is focusing on itself.

Most of the soup kitchens that feed 816,000 people in Khartoum have shut down. Patients were told to leave a U.S.-funded refugee hospital on the Myanmar border. Organizations that provide maternal care, vaccinations and firewood were forced to suspend operations.

“It feels like one easy decision by the U.S. president is quietly killing so many lives,” said Saw Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave a U.S.-funded hospital in the Mae La refugee camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Across the US a freeze/theft of government funding has crippled medical research, clinical trials and other basic public health care systems. While I was with my 19 year old daughter yesterday she received this message from a CDC summer internship program she had applied to:

Pay and scientific grant programs are still shut down:

One scientist texted his landlord to say February rent would be late. Another wasn’t able to pay her credit card bill. Yet another wondered how much longer he could afford his mortgage.

These were some of the effects of President Trump’s federal funding freeze on the postdoctoral researchers who rely on grants from the National Science Foundation. Though a judge blocked that suspension on Tuesday before it could take effect, and the administration rescinded the memo that ordered it on Wednesday, on Thursday the NSF’s online payment system was still down, throwing lives into uncertainty. An NSF email seen by STAT suggested salaries had been suspended to “ensure only eligible activities” are funded.

“If the freeze is not stopped, I might lose my house,” said one biologist doing a postdoctoral fellowship in the southeast, who spoke on condition that neither his name nor his state of residence be used, out of fear of retaliation. He said he had enough in his bank account to last until March, but had no idea how long the pay stoppage might last.

Bolton Howes, a geologist who studies how climatic changes some 56 million years ago shifted the course of rivers, has a similarly thin financial cushion. When he woke up on Thursday to find that his pay was still frozen, he reached out to his landlord to say that his February rent would be coming late. She was understanding, he said; she’d been dealing with issues in her own work caused by the funding freeze. He has an emergency fund that could cover a single month’s rent, but he was reluctant to use it, in case he faced an unexpected expense like a broken-down car or a medical bill. “If I were to get sick, it would be a disaster,” said Howes, an NSF-funded fellow with a joint appointment at both the University of Washington and Western Washington University.

“I’m going to eat food this month, but that’s because I have a credit card,” he went on. “Like, I’m not worried about going hungry.” But he was worried that if it didn’t get sorted out, he’d be dealing with debt.

When asked about the situation by email, NSF media officer Michael England wrote, “Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders. We are working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.”

That suggested that the agency would not be paying any of its grantees until it determined that their work did not conflict with President Trump’s executive orders, including those dismantling diversity initiatives and rolling back protections of transgender rights. England declined to answer any further questions.

“We just have no idea when we’ll be paid,” said Julia Van Etten, an NSF fellow at both Rutgers University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who studies how DNA gets transferred between microbes. “It could be today, with the website going back up. It could be six months from now. We are under the impression that as soon as the NSF is done investigating us for DEI or whatever, we will get paid again. I don’t think my grant is gone.”

Whether the pain, suffering, death, destruction Trump is causing is on purpose or he is just an delusional madman unaware of what he’s doing doesn’t matter. What matters is that we work with everything we got to hold him to account for what he has already done and what he will keep trying to do. I do not believe the American people voted for higher prices, a slower economy, less opportunity, a dysfunctional US government, the unraveling of global/US health systems, millions of people dying here and around the world and the turning of America into a pariah nation, a rogue state. The savagery and fanaticism we are seeing is literally breathtaking. But we are here now, and with every bone in all of our bodies we must make our fellow citizens aware of what these great betrayers are trying to do to this remarkably country; and mitigate the damage to us and people all around the world. For democracy dies in darkness, not light, and we have a lot of important work to do, together.

What can you do today? Make your calls into Congress and insist they block the Unacceptable 4 - Gabbard, Kennedy, Patel and Vought. This is our most important work right now, today.

Keep fighting - Simon