Week of January 27, 2025

Week of January 27

From bad to worse. It’s overwhelming but no one should be looking away. (If you can’t read all of this, and yeah, it’s a lot, just read #12.)

1. (missed from week one) Removed the security detail for Pompeo, Barr, Bolton, and General Milly. Look, I can’t stand Pompeo or Barr but pure vengeance from a sitting president is not something I’m down with.

2. Pardoned the Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht who was to spend life in prison for setting up a black-market internet bitcoin operation which trafficked drugs – 200 million dollars in drugs. Someone on this platform said that Biden pardoned murderers on his way out. No, he commuted their death sentences. They will still remain in prison for life. Most Dems believe that the death penalty is immoral (I agree).

3. Trump froze spending assistance programs leaving millions of elderly folks worried that they will lose Meals on Wheels among many other things. Utter chaos ensued (which is his way). Medicaid portals were down in all 50 states temporarily following the federal funding freeze. Twenty-three state Attorney’s General filed suit, and a judge blocked the freeze. Trump then rescinded the memo while saying the freeze was still in full affect (huh?). As an aside, none of the republican AGs joined the suit because I guess they can’t dare cross Trump even if he is harming their own constituents.

4. Ending refugee programs for those coming from dangerous places seeking to enter LEGALLY. This even includes those from Afghanistan who fought alongside American soldiers and are in fear of their lives in Afghanistan (reminiscent of abandoning our allies, the Kurds to inevitable slaughter).

5. Oh, here’s a good one – Trump keeps claiming that he stopped $50 million tax-payer dollars from going to HAMAS that he said was to - to – to pay for condoms. This. Is. Not. True. Oh, he also said (I’m not making this up) that HAMAS was using the said condoms to make bombs. (The truth: The US has spent a lot of money over the years in developing countries on healthcare and contraceptives for the purpose of preventing HIV (including condoms), but this claim re: HAMAS was made up).

6. Trump posted “The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond,” No, the military did not enter CA to turn on the “giant PNW faucet”. Federal officials turned on federal water lines that had been offline for maintenance. The lines were 500 miles away from LA and the reservoirs are there to feed farms in the summer.

7. And for the award for most nauseating goes to – Zuckerberg settled the lawsuit Trump filed after being banned from FaceBook (for election lies and J6) and decided to donate $25 million to Trump’s presidential library.

8. We found out this week that many of the J6 rioters that Trump pardoned had extensive criminal histories (he didn’t bother to check) and several have already been arrested again.

9. There is a terrible (terrible) plane crash in DC. Trump: Right out of the gate blames DEI. He has no idea what DEI is. It is dog-whistle racism, sexism and ableism (he literally complained that “dwarfs, amputees, epileptics” were being hired at FAA). All of these pilots and air traffic controllers have rigorous, lengthy, difficult training. There are not lower standards for women or people of color. He said he didn’t need to wait for an investigation – he already knows it was DEI (I mean, come on, people are grieving and need real answers!) When asked if he would visit the site, he says “What site? The water? You want me to swim?” Imagine being a parent of one of those ice skaters and having the President talk like this.

10. It should be noted that Trump (before the crash) fired the heads of the TSA and FAA and the Coast Guard. Look, I’m not saying this was the cause, but we cannot just radically dismantle government and think terrible things aren’t going to happen. But Trump - The Nation's Top Aviation Expert says: "You could have gone up. You could have gone down. You could have gone straight up, straight down. You could have turned." He also says the air traffic control system has not been built properly.“ BTW - Every day, FAA's Air Traffic Organization provides service to more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace. The last major airline to crash in the US was in 2009.

11. He unilaterally revoked a civil rights era (1965) executive order (LBJ) that forbid discrimination on the basis of race and gender in hiring. So, you can now just say you aren’t hiring black people because you don’t like black people without any repercussions. Please, I’d love to be wrong about this if anyone has more information.

12. Here is where it is getting terrifying. Remember last week he fired almost every Inspector General (there is only one reason to do that). This week Elon Musk, unelected and with no official government job, or SECURITY CLEARANCE has locked all government employees out of the computer payments system. He and a team of toadies are mucking around in the computer systems that have all of our SS numbers, personal information, tax returns, etc. NO ONE knows wat he is doing(!). Network news is not reporting on this. Fox News is not reporting on this. WHERE THE HELL IS CONGRESS!

13. He’s firing everyone at FBI (thousands) who had anything to do with his investigations. Career civil servants who were simply assigned a case to investigate are being fired. The only reason to do this is pure and petty vengeance, and more importantly, no one will work there with knowledge of the evidence against him (which is a lot). As a bonus, he does also get the joy of being cruel to government workers. The other side has talked about the “weaponization” of the FBI for 4 years. (by the way it is not weaponization if someone has committed serious crimes, but I digress). This is weaponization on steroids.

14. Further, he says he will release the identities of all of these folks, who will undoubtedly get death threats and harassment from the J6 criminals who he pardoned (he knows this of course).

15. He fired 1100 EPA employees. Republicans always say the EPA overreaches, and I’m sure sometimes it has, but our air and water is cleaner now than it was in the 1970s mostly because of the EPA. This is a disaster. You will see. And mark my words, they are coming for our National Parks.

16. The tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Bloody stupid. But don’t take my word for it. As the Wall Street Journal (that liberal rag) editorial states: calls it the dumbest trade war in history, and for no reason. And we thought prices were high before.

17. Project 2025. The entire campaign he said he didn’t have anything to do with Project 2025 (after he found out it was unpopular). Everything he is doing is explicitly from that playbook. From (the brilliant) Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

18. He directed the military to create a 30,000 bed facility at Guantanamo to house illegal immigrants. They keep saying “we aren’t creating internment camps”. But if you are rounding up thousands of people in raids (often capturing legal immigrants) sending them to Guantanamo without due process, you are in fact creating the “camps”.

All of this amounts to a dictatorship in the making. I guarantee you, he is going to try to get congress to give him a 3rd term (without an election) and they will probably do it. Don’t scoff, look at the evidence. What is terrifying (and heartbreaking – I thought we all shared certain high ideals brought by the grand American experiment of self-government) is that millions of Americans appear to be welcoming a dictatorship (as long as it is THEIR dictator) with a cup of theocracy and sprinkling of oligarchy. I could have never ever in my life have predicted this. Again – heartbreaking.

(Side note, if you are reading this and thinking – that Ginger is brainwashed by the (dreaded) MSM think again. The MSM is not a monolith. Most media companies are owned by republicans, including CNN(!), which I don’t watch. Nor do I watch MSNBC. I get my news from many (many) sources.)

And again, in the words of Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton, "So what did I miss?"