Trump 2.0

[IFocus]

Trump voted with Russia, China and NK against the entire western alliance at the UN….

 

[wayneL]

Trump voted with Russia, China and NK against the entire western alliance at the UN….

Details please

 

[Knobby22]

Trump voted with Russia, China and NK against the entire western alliance at the UN….

New best mates. Watch out, Taiwan, Estonia, Greenland and Canada in particular.

Saw he bagged Ronald Reagan.
I am absolutely certain if he was alive, Ronald Reagan would bag Trump. He was a great man with great morals.

 

[DB008]

Nuts

​

 

[basilio]

The Triad

Against Normalism​

It doesn’t matter that Trump’s legislative agenda is in trouble. There is bigger game afoot.​

Jonathan V. Last
Mar 06, 2025
∙ Paid







Same, girlfriend. (Tom Brenner for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

1. SOTU
​

There have been two modes of reaction to Trump’s speech last night. The first is from people like Sarah and Sam who worried that it was an effective demagogic attack.

The second is from people like Matt Yglesias, who viewed it as a bumbling cavalcade of lies unlikely to help Trump and Republicans. Here’s Yglesias:

I could keep writing in this vein about lies and how I’m frustrated with lies and lying, but what’s the point? He got huge applause for a promise to balance the federal budget, and he’s also trying pushing for a gigantic multi-trillion dollar tax cut. In the speech, he didn’t just call for TCJA to be made permanent, he reiterated his calls for no tax on tips and no tax on overtime and pushed for a brand new tax cut on interest payments on car loans.
The problem with lying is that it doesn’t actually set you up to govern.
For all the braggadocio, Trump’s legislative agenda is in peril.

I don’t mean to pick on Yglesias. He’s just one example of the Normalist view, which can be abstracted to something like:

Trump is unconventional in appearance, but the systems are the systems and at the end of the day what matters are the policies enacted.1

To the Normalists, “governing” is the process of enacting policy preferences.

Is this worldview correct? It certainly used to be correct.

But today? I’m not so sure.

---

The Normalists are right that Trump’s legislative agenda is in peril. Republicans probably can’t pass anything in the House without Democratic votes. At most Trump might be able to sign a single, giant budget bill through reconciliation. After that, he’s probably out of moves in Congress.

Two questions:

1. What is Trump’s “legislative agenda”? And,
2. How does this “legislative agenda” fit into Trump’s broader agenda?

---

I submit to you that Trump has never had a legislative agenda beyond “build the wall.” He passed one (1) piece of major legislation in his first term and that was the tax cut favored by Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the Republican old guard. Trump didn’t give a crap about cutting taxes; that was him getting rolled.

If you watched the 2024 campaign and had to write Trump’s priorities on an index card, none of the things he talked about involved legislation:

• Deporting millions of immigrants.
• Lowering prices on consumer goods.
• Imposing tariffs.
• Cutting off Ukraine.
• Weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies.

That was the agenda Trump campaigned on and none of it required lawmaking.

---

Now what has Trump done since assuming office? Has he even pretended to move a single piece of legislation?

No.

He has focused on radically expanding executive power by:

• Attempting to override congressionally mandated spending directives.
• Remaking executive branch agencies without congressional approval.
• Unilaterally rewriting the Constitution on a key question of citizenship.
• Usurping authority from the judiciary by consciously breaking laws and defying court orders.

---

Trump could have accomplished many of his goals through legislative action. His party controls both houses of Congress—he could have signed a law disbanding USAID, for instance.

The Normalist view is that in a stable democracy, policy is what matters—and the most important (and lasting) policies are achieved by making laws.

My own view is that this is a misunderstanding of the moment. Trump’s overriding goal is destabilizing democracy and creating American Orbánism. That’s his agenda.

Pursuit of this agenda has very little to do with passing legislation and a great deal to do with atmospherics and the raw application of power.

What is power?

It’s controlling the Joint Chiefs and dismissing the JAGs who issue guidance on what military orders might be illegal.

It’s having a loyalist at the head of domestic law enforcement to make sure that your people can violate laws with impunity while your opponents are under constant threat.

It’s scaring the judiciary into letting you do what you will. And if they try to stop you, it’s rallying the people to allow you to get away with defying the courts.

It’s convincing the populace of your indomitable strength.

This is all governing—just not in the sense that Normalists understand it. And in this mode of governing, the lies are actually quite helpful. In fact, they’re one of the autocrat’s most useful tools.

---

Maybe everything will be fine in the end and we’ll look back on this moment and say, “Gee, it turned out that Trump was just another politician and all the laws of physics applied to him, too.”

Maybe that’s even the most likely outcome. I sure hope that’s what happens

But to act like that’s a certainty—to act as though the dynamics of American politics are basically normal right now—is an enormously risky bet.

Against Normalism

It doesn’t matter that Trump’s legislative agenda is in trouble. There is bigger game afoot.

www.thebulwark.com

 

[JohnDe]

Trump on Tuesday added to existing tariffs on China, citing its role in the fentanyl crisis in the US, surprising Chinese officials who were still trying to figure out how to approach what they see as an erratic US leader. ​

​

China, which itself has tried to reshape the global order, aligning itself with Russia to challenge the West, now finds itself on the back foot. The vision haunting Xi is one where China finds itself cut off by trade restrictions and sanctions, suffering Soviet-style isolation with fewer outlets for its goods and limited access to crucial technologies. ​

China is secretly worried Donald Trump will win on trade​

LINGLING WEI

China's President Xi Jinping attends the opening session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing this week. Picture: Pedro Pardo / AFP

Soon after Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November, Xi Jinping asked his aides to urgently analyse the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

His concern, according to people who consult with senior Chinese officials, was that as President Trump gears up for a showdown with Beijing, China could get isolated like Moscow during that era.

He’s not wrong to worry. Even though Trump may be the one who currently looks isolated on the world stage – picking trade fights with erstwhile allies like Mexico and Canada, alarming Europe over his handling of the war in Ukraine and vowing to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal – the truth is that China doesn’t hold a strong hand.

With a domestic economy in crisis, Xi is playing defence, hoping to salvage as much as possible of a global trade system that helped pull his country out of poverty.

Across the Pacific, Trump is intent on rewiring that very trading system, which he and his advisers see as having benefited the rest of the world – and China most of all – at the US’s expense.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bu...ory/3e5a41a5194a91a8f2f5450d0ce8d500#comments
It isn’t just trade. The competing agendas of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies are poised to lead to precisely what China is trying to avoid: a superpower clash not seen since the Cold War, an all-encompassing rivalry over economic, technological and overall geopolitical supremacy.

Trump, who highlighted the need to counter China throughout his campaign, returned to the White House with a comfortable victory and Republican control of Congress. He believes he can deal with Beijing from a position of strength, advisers said.

Many of his early diplomatic moves should be viewed in that context, these people said. Trump is trying to end the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine to better focus on China, they said. His recent enthusiastic embrace of Russia and its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, is propelled in part by a strategic desire to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, foreground, arrives at the opening session of the National People's Congress this week. Picture: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

One reason Trump wants US control of the Panama Canal is that he sees the Chinese infrastructure that has been built up there in the past three decades as a national-security threat.

On Tuesday, he notched a victory of sorts, when a consortium of investors led by US asset management firm BlackRock agreed to buy majority stakes in ports on either end of the Panama Canal from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison.

“All the stuff he’s doing is so that we can put more resources” to counter China, an administration official said.

Then president Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands during a business leaders event at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2017. Picture: AFP

Trump on Tuesday added to existing tariffs on China, citing its role in the fentanyl crisis in the US, surprising Chinese officials who were still trying to figure out how to approach what they see as an erratic US leader.

China, which itself has tried to reshape the global order, aligning itself with Russia to challenge the West, now finds itself on the back foot. The vision haunting Xi is one where China finds itself cut off by trade restrictions and sanctions, suffering Soviet-style isolation with fewer outlets for its goods and limited access to crucial technologies.

“Now China is in danger of becoming the target of a similar rivalry,” one of the people who consult with Beijing said. “Xi believes that must be avoided.”

Ships and containers are shrouded in fog at the Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai, which faces uncertainty as global trade tensions mount. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

What complicates Beijing’s efforts at shaping its strategy toward the US is the difficulty in getting Trump’s core team to engage. China hasn’t been a primary focus for Trump in his first weeks. His near-term priorities have been on fixing illegal immigration, slashing government spending and ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

While Xi is waiting for clarity on what the US wants from Beijing, his economic team is preparing ways to hit back at Trump.

Since November, China has dispatched several delegations to Washington to explore potential deals with the new administration, arguing that tariffs would add to the inflationary pressure in the US that Trump is trying to tame.

Simultaneously, Beijing has developed an arsenal of tools – such as export controls on critical minerals – to inflict economic pain on the US and has been courting America’s traditional partners to prepare for a more intense face-off with Washington.

One lesson Xi has learned from the first trade war with Trump is that China has more to lose from hitting back at Trump’s tariff hikes with proportional levy increases, the people said, as the US buys substantially more from China than the other way around.

Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation who consults with the administration, said he has met with members of Chinese delegations that have visited Washington since the election. The Chinese effort amounts to a campaign to ward off tariffs, he said.

“They are kind of desperate,” Pillsbury said. “Their economy is in trouble. Now that Trump put the tariffs on, they know this campaign has failed.”

Still, as Washington amps up pressure, Beijing is trying to project confidence. After Trump’s latest tariff actions this week, China swiftly retaliated. Meanwhile, Beijing set a growth target of about 5 per cent for 2025, a signal that it expects the Chinese economy to resist the rising trade pressures. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman took a defiant stance, saying, “If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

‘Let the Chinese stew’

Trump and Xi seemed to be off to a good start, similar to the beginning of Trump’s first term in 2017. The American leader invited Xi to his January 20 inauguration, and while the Chinese leader sent his vice president instead, it was still a goodwill gesture from a leadership often wary of political risks. Both leaders have expressed an interest in having a summit.

Such diplomatic niceties, however, only mask the actions beneath – and what likely is in store for China.

Trump’s “America First” policy essentially calls for dismantling the norms set up by the World Trade Organisation since 1995. Under those norms, China has been able to flood the world with cheap exports while limiting foreign access to its own market. China’s $US295 billion ($465bn) trade surplus with the US is the widest of any US trading partner.


Matt Turpin, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution who served on Trump’s National Security Council during his first term, said Trump believes that US interests, especially those of American workers and companies, are harmed by the liberal international economic system that developed after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

To re-engineer the system, Turpin said, Trump’s trade team may “focus on getting relatively favourable deals with everyone else first and let the Chinese stew in their continuing economic depression”.

The people close to the administration said Trump believes that the US can strengthen its leverage over Beijing by individually renegotiating terms of trade with its other partners.

On his first day in office, Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing federal agencies to conduct a series of reviews of the US’s existing trade relationships. One key task for his economic team is to cut deals with countries like Mexico and Vietnam, part of efforts to prevent Chinese companies from rerouting goods to the US through third parties.

After Trump first threatened to hit Mexico and Canada with 25 per cent tariffs in early February, Mexico made a “very interesting proposal” to match the US on tariffs for imports from China, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg TV.

Following a pause, Trump on Tuesday followed through on his tariff threat, arguing that the two countries still hadn’t firmed up their policies to stop migrant and drug flows across the border. A day later, the White House said it will give automakers a one-month exemption from the new levies.

‘Sticks and leverage’

The effort to isolate China economically isn’t limited to tariffs, which Trump had said could go as high as 60 per cent.

Other actions being considered by his trade team – Treasury’s Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer – include restricting Chinese investment in the US and US investment in China, targeting industries dominated by China, such as shipbuilding, as well as further limiting the sale of high-tech products to Chinese companies. Rather than hurting the US, the administration believes export controls will make the economy stronger.

At the same time, Trump himself has held out the prospect of making a fresh deal with China. “It’s possible, it’s possible,” he said last month. And he has continued to call Xi a “good friend’’, just as he did during his first presidency.

The people close to the administration said ultimately, the US may push China to agree to make “structural changes” in the way it runs the economy – a deal that Xi is unlikely to accept given his emphasis on central control to manage the economy. China generally abhors what it sees as any outside attempt to challenge the Communist Party’s governance.

The people point to as a template a proposed deal Beijing rejected in May 2019, after rounds of intense negotiations during the height of the trade war with the first Trump administration. That deal proposed changes in Chinese laws to prohibit theft of American technology and to better protect American companies operating in China – changes Xi found unacceptable.

Trump isn’t in a rush to negotiate with Xi because of the US’s economic strength, the people said. The administration is developing “a lot of sticks and leverage” that can be used in negotiations, said one of the people.

Trump also continues to believe that he can take actions like tariffs, while simultaneously expecting that his personal relationship with Xi can result in the two countries finding some common ground, the people said.

Rivals, partners

It was during Trump’s first four years in the White House, from 2017 to 2020, that the US policy toward China underwent a major makeover. The longstanding strategy of deepening economic ties and cooperative engagement with Beijing was replaced by one characterised by estrangement, including increased tariffs and tech restrictions.

Even though President Joe Biden continued the assertive approach, his administration largely kept the relationship on an even keel. Scores of channels of communication with Beijing were revived under Biden.

Now, much to the chagrin of Beijing, Trump in his second term is both less restrained and more determined, paving the way for even more intense US-China storms.

In meetings with American business and thought leaders in recent months, Xi and his aides have repeatedly conveyed Beijing’s desire to be a partner with the US, not an outright adversary, according to people who attended the gatherings.

“They’ve studied Trump carefully and have a pretty realistic view of the situation,” said Graham Allison, former dean of Harvard Kennedy School who has met with Xi and other senior Chinese officials in the past year. “Xi has been vocal about his effort to conceptualise the relationship as one where the US and China are both rivals and partners simultaneously.”

Trump’s one-two tariff punch in the past weeks has exposed pitfalls in Beijing’s wait-and-see approach toward Washington.

Since Trump slapped the initial 10 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods in early February, according to the people close to Beijing’s thinking, China’s leadership has been holding out for the Trump team to make specific demands, in hopes that those asks could lead to a broader discussion.

Vice President of China Han Zheng, left, attends the inauguration ceremony on January 20. Picture: Pool/AFP

Xi isn’t interested in making an offer just on the opioid fentanyl, the people said. Rather, they said, Xi hopes to engage Trump in dialogue that can lead to a more comprehensive agreement and define the overall relationship.

Xi’s envoy to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Vice President Han Zheng, told Trump officials about Beijing’s willingness to discuss a range of topics including fentanyl and trade, the people said.

The 10 per cent additional tariff move by Trump this week, one of the people said, was “pretty unexpected”, while adding, “the Chinese side has been holding out for the US side to come to the table with conditions.”

The Wall Street Journal

 

[DB008]

Pete Hegseth (USA Secretary of Defence) - getting rid of all that Trans B.S. in the USA Military. Thats great news.

 

[basilio]

Overview of legal, administrative and political challenges to Trumps program​

More reasons for modest optimism​

This week’s ten​

Robert Reich Mar 7

Friends,

Your anxiety is entirely justified. We are going through one of the most stressful times in American history. It is a national emergency.
Yet the resistance to this foul regime continues to mount. Here’s this week’s report on 10 reasons for modest optimism, in rough order of importance.

1. The courts are stepping up their fight against the regime.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid as part of his efforts to slash government spending. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal members to form a majority.

It’s the second 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against Trump since he returned to power, and it shows that an unlikely majority does exist to rein in Trump’s excesses.

This probably accounts for Trump’s decision to back off from issuing an executive order dismantling the Education Department. The Supreme Court would almost certainly have held that only Congress can shut down a department. (Shutting the Education Department has also been unpopular among Republican leaders in rural areas that heavily rely on federal funding.)

Meanwhile, lower federal courts are now considering over 80 separate lawsuits against the Trump regime. So far, the vast majority of lower-court rulings have been against Trump.

In an opinion handed down Thursday morning, Federal District Court Judge John J. McConnell Jr. extended an order barring Trump from withholding billions in congressionally approved funds to 22 states and the District of Columbia, including Federal Emergency Management funding. The judge said:

“Here, the executive put itself above Congress. It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending … In an evident and acute harm, with floods and fires wreaking havoc across the country, federal funding for emergency management and preparedness would be impacted.”

Also on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that Trump violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, and that Wilcox remains in her position at the federal agency. Howell wrote: “The President’s interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power — or, more aptly, his aspiration — is flat wrong.”
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley extended a freeze on the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding through the National Institutes of Health.

Also on Wednesday, the Merit Systems Protection Board, which decides federal worker disputes, temporarily allowed thousands of Department of Agriculture employees swept up in Musk’s government-gutting effort to get back to work.

2. Musk and Trump Republicans are seen to be targeting Social Security.
Elon Musk calls Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” That’s rich coming from the richest person in the world.
It’s also frightening coming from the person wielding a chainsaw to government programs — promising to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, when Social Security is one of the largest of all government programs.
Acting Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Leland Dudek told a group this week that Musk’s DOGE is essentially in charge of the SSA.

“Things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before,” Dudek said, referring to Musk’s cost-cutting team as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs.” He continued: “I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions.’”

The reason I include this as a reason for optimism is that Social Security is also the most popular of all government programs. By demeaning and threatening Social Security, Musk is touching the proverbial “third rail” of American politics.
Good. Let Trump and other Republicans try to wiggle out of this one.

3. DOGE’s credibility is shot.
Musk’s group claims to have saved taxpayers $65 billion so far. But DOGE has itemized only its cancellations of contracts and leases, totaling about $10 billion.

Not even these contract cancellations amount to much. The New York Times found many so-called “cancelled” contracts had actually ended under previous presidents.

By some estimates, DOGE has saved the government just $2 billion. That comes to 1/35 of 1 percent of the federal budget.
Repeated errors have raised questions about the quality and veracity of the information Musk’s DOGE is putting out. The mistakes also call into question the team members’ competence — whether they understand the government well enough to cut it while avoiding catastrophe.

This week, Musk again demanded every federal worker justify their employment, and once again, his hastily executed email has sowed confusion and resistance throughout the workforce, with many agency heads openly defying it.

Federal workers at NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program didn’t know how to respond because HLS has contracted with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket company, the major competitor to Musk’s SpaceX, and HLS workers didn’t want to disclose to Musk what they were doing.

At the same time, the Commerce Department has adjusted a government program to make it easier for states and municipalities to use government subsidies to buy Musk’s Starlink internet service.

(Mark my words: When all this is put together, it will make Warren G. Harding’s Teapot Dome scandal look like a game of checkers.
Meanwhile, the consequences of Trump’s destruction of USAID continue to ricochet around the world. A senior official at USAID said Trump’s crushing the agency and withdrawing foreign aid would likely result in up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year; 200,000 children a year becoming paralyzed with polio and hundreds of millions of infections; and more than 28,000 new cases of infectious diseases such as Ebola and Marburg every year.

4. Republicans lawmakers are forcing Trump to reduce Musk’s power.
On Tuesday, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on CNN that Cabinet secretaries should retain the full power to hire and fire, echoing a message Trump has received from other Republican lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries.

On Thursday, Trump convened his Cabinet and told them they’re in charge of their departments, not Musk. Musk can only make recommendations to the departments but not issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy.

Trump also said he wants to keep good people in government and not eject capable workers en masse. “As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he posted. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’”

Nice words but I’ll believe it when I see it. The real significance of this is it shows Trump is feeling pressure to demonstrate he’s constraining Musk.
5. Republicans are hiding from their constituents.
Over the last two weeks, Republican lawmakers have faced scenes of frustration and outrage in theirs districts.

At a town hall in rural Kansas on Saturday, Republican Senator Roger Marshall shut down the event after participants shouted over each other to express concerns about veterans’ jobs being cut and ask whether Marshall believes Russia invaded Ukraine.

Attendees booed when Marshall abruptly ended the meeting. They shouted, “We’re going to vote you out” and “You’re not done!” according to a video clip from the meeting.

In Tennessee, voters gathered inside and outside an event held by Representative Diana Harshbarger, a Republican Freedom Caucus member, expressing anger over Trump and Musk’s actions and demanding that the Republican congresswoman stand up to them. According to footage of the event shared by local TV station WJHL, the crowd repeatedly interrupted the congresswoman, leading her to plea with them to stop.

California Republican Representative Jay Obernolte was confronted by voters who questioned the firing of Joshua Tree National Park employees by Musk and Trump, according to KVCR. Audience members shouted over Obernolte, who claimed that the park employees would be rehired but offered no further details.

As a result of these and many other angry confrontations, GOP leaders are now discouraging Republican lawmakers from holding in-person town halls. North Carolina Representative Richard Hudson, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, is urging Republicans to hold “virtual” town halls instead.

6. The economy is taking a nosedive.
I’m including this among reasons to be optimistic because a growing number of Trump voters are suffering buyer’s remorse. They voted for him because they thought he’d fix the economy. Instead, the economy is taking a nosedive.

Because of Trump’s tariffs and his budget-busting tax cuts, consumer expectations about inflation are the highest they’ve been since 1995. Over 75 percent of the public believes that their incomes aren’t keeping up with inflation.

Credit card and auto loan delinquencies are higher than they’ve been since the 2008 financial crisis. Homebuilders are frozen, as well.
This week’s data on consumer confidence showed it down to a level last seen in 2021.

Data from the Commerce Department, out last Friday, showed consumer spending falling sharply in January, adding to angst about the economy’s prospects.

After new data came out this week on trade and consumer spending, the Atlanta Fed is projecting that the U.S. is shrinking at a rate of 1.5 percent in this quarter.

The political fallout is clear: Trump, came into office relatively popular. Now more Americans disapprove of him than approve, including nearly 60 percent of independents.

I’m also including this week’s plunge in the stock market on my causes for modest optimism because Trump and his wealthy campaign backers consider the stock market their measure of success or failure.

The S&P 500 dropped 1.8 percent on Thursday, taking the index’s slide for this week to 3.6 percent and putting it on course for its worst week since a banking crisis two years ago that felled some of the country’s small lenders. Have a look:

7. The stock market’s slide has forced Trump to back down on his tariffs.
The stock market’s negative reaction to Trump’s tariffs caused him to withdraw them.

On Thursday, Trump suspended new tariffs on most imports from Mexico and Canada until April 2. The exemptions, covering goods brought into the country under a trade pact Trump signed in his first term, came just two days after he incited a trade fight by imposing tariffs of 25 percent on two of the nation’s closest economic partners.

Bottom line: The stock market is stopping Trump from doing his worst.

8. Trump and Republicans are accepting a continuation of Biden’s spending levels.
The troubling economic headwinds are also pushing Trump Republicans to avoid a government shutdown, which would further worsen the economy.

With time running short to avoid a shutdown at the end of next week, Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are urging Republicans to accept a stopgap bill that would keep federal dollars flowing at current levels through the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

This is a major surrender by Republicans because the stopgap funding bill would maintain spending at levels enacted under former President Joe Biden and would not include cuts being made by Musk’s DOGE.

9. Europe is coming together.
Trump has opened talks with Russia without directly involving Europe or Ukraine and seems intent on turning his back on America’s traditional allies.

The good news is that leaders of the European Union are joining together. On Thursday, the heads of state or government from the EU’s 27 member countries gathered in Brussels to discuss how to bolster both Europe’s own defenses and its support for Ukraine. “Europe faces a clear and present danger,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU executive arm, as she walked into the gathering alongside Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, calling this a “watershed moment.”
“We are very grateful we are not alone,” said Zelensky.

Meanwhile, Europe is forging trade partnerships without the United States. As Trump puts up a higher fence around the American economy, other nations are lowering theirs — further isolating America.

The European Union has concluded a major agreement with four South American countries to create one of the world’s largest trade zones, linking markets with 850 million people, along with a new trade arrangement with Mexico.

10. Democrats are finally showing some spine.
My last item on this week’s list of reasons for modest optimism is that Democrats are finally showing a bit of backbone. During Trump’s interminable address to Congress on Tuesday night, many Democratic members raised signs. Some turned their backs on Trump. Others walked out of the speech.

After 77-year-old Texas Representative Al Green rose from his seat, shook his cane and yelled that Trump had “no mandate to cut Medicaid,” Republican Speaker Mike Johnson ordered Green ejected from the chamber. After the House voted to censure Green, he led a group of his colleagues in singing “We Shall Overcome,” forcing Johnson to call a recess.

On Thursday, Green gave an impassioned speech calling for “positive, righteous incivility” in the face of “ignoble incivility” from Trump. Green also noted that Trump faced no reprimand for calling Democratic members of Congress “lunatics” on Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are asking the District of Columbia’s bar association to investigate Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, whom Trump has nominated to be permanent U.S. attorney —charging that Martin has “abused” prosecutorial power to threaten his political opponents.

Asking bar associations to investigate Trump nominees is a good means of circumventing Trump’s Republican lackeys in holding people responsible. (It worked with Rudy Giuliani.)
***
As before, my intention in giving you these reasons for modest optimism is not to minimize the emergency we’re in but to offer some cause for believing all is not lost.

Musk is proving to be a liability for Trump. It’s only a matter of time before Trump jettisons him.
Trump has put the economy in peril, which will cause widespread pain. Yet nothing galvanizes public outrage more than a poor economy.
Your continuing activism is also helping turn the tide against the Trump-Vance-Musk regime. Please keep it up.

 

[basilio]

So who needs to know about food safety anyway ?​

USDA eliminates two committees on food safety​

The US Department of Agriculture has eliminated two committees that advise it on food safety, the agency said on Friday.

The USDA eliminated the national advisory committee on microbiological criteria for foods and the national advisory committee on meat and poultry inspection, a spokesperson told Reuters.

These cuts raise concerns about government oversight of the food supply as the Trump administration seeks to downsize the federal bureaucracy and slash costs.

The committees provided scientific advice to the USDA and other federal agencies on public health issues related to food safety, said the non-profit consumer advocacy group Consumer Reports.

 

[basilio]

Cliff Asness: The New ‘Crypto Fort Knox’ Is as Dumb as It Sounds

Unless of course you are xalls deep in your own crypto scam project intended to make you the richest person in the world.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/world/trump-s-crypto-project-raises-350-million-fuelling-ethics-concerns-article-12959461.html

To create a sovereign wealth fund dedicated to something five times or more as volatile as straight-up stocks is an awful idea.

(Illustration by The Free Press, images via Getty)

By Cliff Asness

PREVIEW

I’ve been managing money for 33 years now with some modest success. While there are some worthy competitors, it’s hard for me to remember a much worse idea than the U.S. launching a “strategic cryptocurrency reserve.” Nevertheless, on Thursday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for just such a fund. David Sacks—Trump’s crypto czar—tweeted that the reserve would be “like a digital Fort Knox,” perhaps forgetting that the U.S. has been off the gold standard since 1933. In any case, his words do not diminish my scorn for this dangerous boondoggle, as I will explain below.

A sovereign wealth fund for the U.S., which President Trump has also begun planning, is inappropriate, unneeded, likely harmful, and potentially quite corrupt. But a strategic cryptocurrency reserve looks at a “normal” sovereign wealth fund and says, “Hold my beer,” as we are going to plaid...

Continue reading ‘Cliff Asness: The New ‘Crypto Fort Knox’ Is as Dumb as It Sounds’

 

[mullokintyre]

Trumps fail will not be due to the puerile comments from orgs like the Bulwark, or the Atlantic, or any of the other leftist elite pontificators.
It will be because he has misunderstood that at some point on time, you have to acknowledge and accommodate those who think differently to "your side".
His regime is making all the same mistakes that the far left elitists did with their cancel culture, their debanking, their social media payoffs, using the wheels of government to silence and punish his opponents.
He has and hopefully continue to do some useful things, but whether there is a positive net gain versus a negative net loss will remain to be seen.
His real work will be in dismantling some of the deep state blocks that have managed to suck up so much of the wealth while doing sfa to earn it.
if he manages to get some investigation into ALL the members of congress and the house of reps as to how so many acquired such great wealth in their time in office when they were paid at best average salaries, then I would applaud him greatly.
If he manages to reign in the power of the big commercial banks and the FED, the war mongering neocons that seem to exist on both sides of politics, and manages to gstop the US from interfering in damn near every country on earth it would not be a bad start.

Mick

 

[basilio]

Forget the "puerile comments " from whatever. Let me sum it up.

The facts are that Trumps/Musks wholesale attack on US administration is the most destructive, dangerous and criminal attack ever made on the operations of the US administration. The consequences on international health and world US relations, US science, health, food, social security, tax collection, in fact everything will be profound.

Will he do some "good things " ? Mick do you seriously believe Trump will investigate Republican reps and Senators for graft ? Can you even imagine him pulling in the Big Banks when he is taking a central role in promoting and running his own crypto scams ?

And how do you square Trump not "interfering with other countries" while he is publicly determined to take over Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada !! and the Gaza strip ? Really ?

And "deep State blocks " WTF is that when its at home ? Please explain.

In ASF it seems pointless to get into the weeds about how destructive and wrong headed Musks chainsaw crew is behaving. I did highlight how the Clinton administration went through a bi partisan in depth review of US admin, making many improvements and saving billions. It can be done - but this is not that process.

 

[mullokintyre]

Trumps fail will not be due to the puerile comments from orgs like the Bulwark, or the Atlantic, or any of the other leftist elite pontificators.
It will be because he has misunderstood that at some point on time, you have to acknowledge and accommodate those who think differently to "your side".
His regime is making all the same mistakes that the far left elitists did with their cancel culture, their debanking, their social media payoffs, using the wheels of government to silence and punish his opponents.
He has and hopefully continue to do some useful things, but whether there is a positive net gain versus a negative net loss will remain to be seen.
His real work will be in dismantling some of the deep state blocks that have managed to suck up so much of the wealth while doing sfa to earn it.
if he manages to get some investigation into ALL the members of congress and the house of reps as to how so many acquired such great wealth in their time in office when they were paid at best average salaries, then I would applaud him greatly.
If he manages to reign in the power of the big commercial banks and the FED, the war mongering neocons that seem to exist on both sides of politics, and manages to gstop the US from interfering in damn near every country on earth it would not be a bad start.

Mick

Just to emphasis how the deep state arseholes are screwing things around, and why it will likely be futile whatever trump does.
The just released Fed reserve data on revolving debt shows a huge plunge in revolving credit in January, and just to add salt in to the wound, the data for November and December was revised downwards.
Just like 2009, the fix is in.
Mick

 

[DB008]

​

 

[qldfrog]

New best mates. Watch out, Taiwan, Estonia, Greenland and Canada in particular.

Saw he bagged Ronald Reagan.
I am absolutely certain if he was alive, Ronald Reagan would bag Trump. He was a great man with great morals.

A trip down memory lane , you are probably too young for that, and i am borderline : the current TDS was paralleled during Reagan/ Thatcher time
He was a stupid actor, outside establisment, his wife was in control on astrology, memes equivalent on paper at the time
In Europe, millions were in the street, really, millions,against Pershing bases....
Us go home was tagged all over Europe
You might be unaware in Australia
Yet Reagan managed to give the final blow to USSR and bring decades of peaces and renewal of the USA.
Trump is not that far, he is fighting the new communism where it is now, inside, in the west.
I believe Reagan would be if not proud, at the least happy that some one stands for freedom and the US. Of A, and more generally the western world
Who else but Trump could do it?

 

[DB008]

​

 

[Dona Ferentes]

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.
- Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary in 1848

Seventy years later, US president Woodrow Wilson told a British audience “not (to) speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither … There are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests.”

 

[qldfrog]

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.
- Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary in 1848

Seventy years later, US president Woodrow Wilson told a British audience “not (to) speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither … There are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests.”

So the controversial i know need for nuke in Australia stopping the waste in submarines jets if purely seen as a token of friendship/vassal-ship..my frenchglish

 

[basilio]

Intriguing story. Illegal migrants file tax returns and pay taxes. They are substantial contributors to the US tax base supporting the social security network which they won't even access.
In a nutshell

It’s All About the Data

IMMIGRANTS WITHOUT SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS receive individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITIN) to facilitate their tax payments, which is why the IRS has records of their last known addresses and information about their families, employers, and earnings.​

The Trump administration is after that data because they want to use it to search out people who may be in the country illegally. The pressure being brought to bear on the agency for the data is part of a larger effort to try to collect as much useful information as possible to help recalibrate the machinery of the government to accelerate deportations.

“These are workers that are positively contributing to our communities—they’re our neighbors and coworkers who are contributing not just through their labor in critical industries like agriculture and construction, but they’re paying their taxes and don’t get benefits back,” Pablo Willis, the group’s communications director, told The Bulwark. “Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s entire business empire is based on federal subsidies, and Tesla didn’t pay taxes last year.”

Trump Wants to Use the IRS to Track Down Immigrants. They May Stop Paying Taxes.
Undocumented immigrants contribute billions to Social Security and other programs. That money might fall off because of Trump’s crackdown.
Adrian Carrasquillo
Mar 06, 2025

---

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)
IMMIGRANTS IN THE COUNTRY ILLEGALLY paid nearly $100 billion in taxes in 2022, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic policy.

But that source of government revenue may soon taper off as the Trump administration pushes the Internal Revenue Service to help it accelerate its program of mass deportations.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the IRS rejected a request from Homeland Security to reveal the addresses of 700,000 people the agency suspects of being undocumented, an action that could violate taxpayer privacy laws. But the Post went on to report the new acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause is (surprise) more amenable to complying with the request to turn over the taxpayer data of immigrants.

The result, experts say, is not just that tax data will be morphed into a cudgel for the immigration fights. People are also now becoming too scared to file their taxes. One immigration lawyer told me they suspect the number of people forgoing those filings will only rise as the Washington Post report hits Spanish-language media.

Trump Wants to Use the IRS to Track Down Immigrants. They May Stop Paying Taxes.

Undocumented immigrants contribute billions to Social Security and other programs. That money might fall off because of Trump’s crackdown.

substack.com

 

[basilio]

I checked out the Taxation report on undocumented immigrants. Quite illuminating.
Worth highlighting some of the main points.

Key Findings​

• Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments.
• Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue.
• More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.
• At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion).
• Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion).
• In a large majority of states (40), undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders.

Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase.

itep.org