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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The existential concept Americans must face is whether the president has to follow the law at all or deserves to be raised above the people he rules and allowed to desecrate hundreds of years of evolving due process and rights with impunity.
Battle lines are being drawn with multiple rulings against the disavowal of birthright citizenship, a federal judge freezing parts of the ‘LONG LIVE THE KING’ President’s plan to put thousands of USAID employees on leave after Trump directly dictated “CLOSE IT DOWN!” on social media, and a judge temporarily restricting Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, citing the risk of “irreparable harm.”
Exactly, with all the private information being mined by the DOGE king and crew - including, what a surprise! new access to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and trade secrets from enforcement actions by potential rivals. Who is going to pay for the consequences – personal and business financial losses, reputations damaged and lives destroyed?
It’s saddening to see the glee with which the Diabolic Duo blow up America’s hegemonic advantage and demonize USAID as a “criminal organization” run by “radical lunatics.” Quite the reverse, its aid workers are committed to performing public service that provides a humanitarian hand up around the world, burnishing the reputation of the United States in the process.
Risking their own lives to provide succor in times of conflict, feed the hungry, dispense medical assistance, free girls from sex trafficking, combat catastrophes – natural and man-made, saving children’s lives and bringing clean water and sanitation to the dispossessed.
Out of the $38 billion that USAID spent in fiscal year 2023 – wow! $38 billion, that’s a lot of money – unless you realize that since the Breakwater-for-Billionaires was elected, Elon Musk has become $138 billion richer, and Mark Zuckerberg has become $49 billion richer. Musk, Zuckerberg and also-ran Jeff Bezos in the billionaire profiting-from-the-president stakes are together worth almost one trillion dollars.
Listen up, of USAID’s piddly $38 billion, nearly $20 billion was spent on supplies from companies here at home including nutrient-rich foods and medications for health programs fighting malaria, tuberculosis, H.I.V./AIDS and infectious diseases.
Such humanitarian programs, education and assistance provided by USAID missions benefits the United States by protecting against pandemics and terrorist fanatics, by preventing future waves of uncontrollable migration.
Gutting USAID will cost thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence.
Samantha Power who headed USAID under Biden points out that the agency renewed American superpower status raising its credibility in a world defined by cross-border intimidation and belligerent economic and political competition.
Sawdust-for-Sense has stymied this.
Meanwhile, many of the top employees he fired were involved with investigations into Musk’s companies meaning more profit for the porkers and less for the public purse to pursue laudable programs saving millions of lives through USAID and PEPFAR.
As Power recently wrote in a New York Times editorial, USAID “is no longer monitoring bird flu in 49 countries as it was three weeks ago; it has stopped working with at-risk youth in Central America to prevent gang violence that spurs migration; it is not cleaning up fields poisoned by Agent Orange in Vietnam; it is not eradicating polio; it is not collaborating with communities in countries like Syria, Morocco and Kazakhstan to reduce vulnerability to radicalization. The costs of dismantling these programs — and thus perpetrating these harms — will be felt for generations to come.”
While the real oppressors, those who shuttered the agency’s website documenting its many achievements as they yanked funding to pay for the proposed tax breaks for the wealthy, and batshit billionaires think it’s a giddy game without consequences.
That their individual actions are protected by the team leader, Mad King Donnie.
Isn’t the Troublemaker halting assistance to South Africa, birthplace of Elon Musk, claiming the country was discriminating against wealthy whites such as Musk’s family and offering refugee status for those poor, put-upon white folks suffering from being a minority, just a tad… discriminatory?
Project 2025 architect Russell Vought is progressing rapidly in shuttering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One perverted policy stops any action against non-depository institutions… such as Musk's proposed peer-to-peer payment venture with Visa. So, it won’t be required to follow basic financial regulations that exist to keep ordinary Americans’ money safe from the profiteering pickpockets of the criminal billionaire class.
Experts opine Twitter Soup’s lawsuits against CBS and The Des Moines Register lack merit. But the cost of defending them and those to come are already intimidating the press, or at least the craven corporate C-suiters and their oligarch overseers who control the mainstream media’s purse strings. Meanwhile an emboldened Mississippi judge dictated a newspaper remove an editorial criticizing disingenuous behavior by city officials.
Now the Legend-in-his Own-Mind has crowned himself chair of the Kennedy Center – bringing a crassness to the fabled arts complex that would have the king and queen of Camelot rolling in their graves.
Sweet, until you take into account that His Niblick packed the electorate – by purging all Democratic-appointed board members and swapping them for his hand-selected replacements. Such an honor to win a fixed election!
Now the craziness of the Cockamamie Cuckoo is accelerating with embracing of the alt-right in Germany, unilaterally conniving over the demise of Ukraine with Putin, and using his media company to sue a Supreme Court justice in Brazil who is considering arresting Best-Bud-Bolsonaro for his role in an attempted coup to remain in office as the Brazilian president.
And then the steal: Trudeau is taking Tit-for-Tatters’ threat to annex Canada seriously – after all there is a lot of money to be made there and the Desperate Despot will need plenty of ducats to pay for promised tax cuts, controlling mobs of those losing their jobs to his brainfarts, and paying all his legal bills.Add in the self-interests of everyone else in the Puffed-Up Pontiff’s unelected orbit and Senate-approved coterie…
Although the Prez openly violates the law and Constitution on a daily basis not to mention social norms, it appears nothing remains to curtail even the most egregious of utterances and actions. Blatant disregard of advisors, for laws, for rules and precedent is the order of the day.
Are the proposals to annex Canada (which would have to be forcibly because what proud Canadian would voluntarily give obeisance to an enemy emperor?), and remove all Palestinians from Gaza so it can be razed and a new Riviera arise from the rubble the statements of a sane leader?
What checks and balances? Opponents are filing lawsuits, but courts are slow and stacked – with budgets being slashed and officials with integrity fired left and right, how can they hope to keep up with Whack-a-Moling changes the White House has already implemented and those t come?
Congress and the Supreme Court? Hah! Republican lawmakers, having already seen the wrath of the Emperor God in action are looking to hedge their own futures, not advocate for an electorate too easily misled.
Lack of consolidated pushback by a Congress already divided over this issue and a media at least partially controlled by backroom billionaires playing advantages sets a precedent that His Twitlessness can, indeed, rule like an absolute monarch and muse openly on tossing out term limits.
In previous times of domestic conflict – the Civil War, the rise of the Robber Barons, the New Deal, Civil Rights, Women’s rights – there has always been a yin and a yang – Congress and Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court, the popular vote and the power of the plutocrats.
Now the voices of dissent are muffled and isolated by internal disagreement so there is no vocal opposition
Now drastic change can be promulgated without a majority mandate.
No matter how dangerous it is to the people and the country.
One toehold gained guarantees that many more attempts are sure to follow. The destruction of public education, public healthcare, public housing, and the panoply of social programs on which too many Americans rely to survive in a United States dominated by plutocrats focused solely on personal profit.
Once the people accept his right to consign information illegal immigrants who have broken the law to concentrate camps in Cuba, what will be the next groups targeted? Hispanic activists? Healthcare providers who believe in a woman’s right to control her own body? The FBI Agents who investigated his complicity in the Jan. 6 riots and murders? Those elected officials who have spoken out against his excesses? Writers like me?
Have our Courts and judicial system been so emasculated that JD Vance can blatantly advocate disregard for the rule of law, emulating Andrew Jackson in preemptively taunting: “The Chief Justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
Following it up earlier this month with “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” – Musk’s “Sieg heil” methodology is clearly dangerously infectious.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
