Supporters often have said that Donald Trump’s intent is to “shake things up” in government. But his administration’s actions are so destructive and chaotic that he could be accused of inflicting often fatal “shaken baby syndrome” on the country.
This is the second installment of my Trump Outrage Watch designed to help me (and you) keep track of his violations of the Constitution, laws, norms and ethics perpetrated at a mind-numbing pace. In this week’s edition:
1. The Environment
The administration’s health care policies could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, or perhaps millions. The most potentially catastrophic is his dismissal of climate change as a “hoax” and cancellation of policies at the Environmental Protection Agency and kindred departments designed to combat it—or even statistically monitor it.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he was “driving a dagger through the heart” of climate regulation. He ordered a “reconsideration” of the 2009 “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses were pollutants subject to EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act. The finding is the basis of all government action to curtail climate change— limits on emissions for vehicles, power plants, hydrofluorocarbons and methane from oil and gas pipeline leaks. It also required polluters to report their emissions.
Zeldin has rescinded Biden administration climate regulations limiting emissions and encouraging faster development of clean energy sources, principally wind and solar and providing tax breaks for electric car purchases. Trump, whose energy policy is “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas, has halted clean energy projects, repealed strict Biden auto emissions standards, cancelled electric vehicle incentives (while advertising Elon Musk’s Teslas on the White House lawn) and expanded oil and gas leases on federal land.
The Trump administration has announced plans to reduce EPA’s budget by 65 percent and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by 50 percent. NOAA presently provides comprehensive information on weather, climate patterns and natural disaster preparedness.
Administration actions and Zeldin statements strongly suggest that EPA will stop measures to combat climate change despite record annual increases in average air and water temperatures in the US and worldwide, rising sea levels owing to glacier melts, and increased “billion dollar” incidents of wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme weather events. This despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity, and warnings from the United Nations and US government agencies that climate change represents a long-term “existential threat” to mankind.
2. Public Health
Trump actions threatening public health include a $1 billion reduction in medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health, especially affecting the cancer and heart disease institutes, plus dismissal of 1,200 personnel. Reductions in grants to universities and research institutes have torn multi-million holes in university research efforts, as has a cutback in “indirect cost” payments (overhead reimbursements). The result is chaos and job insecurity at the organizations responsible for discovery of the human genome, HIV treatments, cancer immunotherapy and vaccine discoveries such as MRNA, decisive in curbing the COVID pandemic.
Cuts in personnel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), responsible for investigating and combating disease outbreaks, has cost 1,600 workers their jobs.
On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a major reorganization that would cut 10,000 additional jobs across multiple divisions beyond the 10,000 who had taken early retirement previously. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be reduced by 2,400, including divisions focused on global health, domestic HIV prevention and prevention of injury such as gun violence.
HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr’s repeated allegations that vaccines cause such diseases as autism, ADHD and auto-immune diseases—rejected by most health experts—have contributed to a sizable increase in vaccine refusal rates (up to 20-30 percent in some communities), resulting in a spike in childhood measles (once believed to have been eliminated) to 300 current cases in 16 states, three deaths and numerous hospitalizations.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post revealed that David Grier, a non-doctor who has often claimed that vaccines cause autism has been selected by HHS to do a study on that issue. Any doubts where those efforts will go?
Kennedy has advanced the idea of allowing the avian flu virus to spread naturally in bird populations to identify immune specimens—a strategy health experts say will risk development of strains that may afflict humans.
3. Ukraine and Putin
Trump is continuing to tolerate Vladimir Putin’s refusal to sign onto his 30-day ceasefire proposal after forcing Volodymyr Zelensky to accept it and agree to give the US rare minerals as “repayment” for US war aid.
Negotiations between the US and Russia and the US and Ukraine have led to agreements that the two combatants will avoid striking each other’s energy infrastructure and shipping in the Black Sea. US negotiator Steve Witkoff seems to be confident that the 30-day general ceasefire will lead to a longer-term ceasefire. We’ll see.
Putin is demanding tough conditions before accepting the 30-day ceasefire: Ukrainian troops still in the Russian region of Kursk must “surrender or die.” Ukraine must forego membership in NATO and the European Union, effectively becoming a neutral state not aligned with the West.
According to CNN, Putin also suggested that Ukraine should cease mobilizing and training troops during the ceasefire and foreign nations should stop military aid to Ukraine “at a time,” Putin said, “when Russian troops are advancing on almost all areas of combat contact.” In fact, Russia is launching major attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine. He also is demanding that NATO countries on Russia’s periphery de-escalate their military buildups.
NBC quoted Trump as saying, “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia” if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire, but “I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.” Previously he halted US military aid to Ukraine after concluding, following his testy Oval Office exchange, that Zelensky did not want peace. Aid resumed when Zelensky accepted the ceasefire.
The disparity between Trump’s use of the stick on Ukraine and vague threats of economic sanctions for Russia was amplified during US negotiator Witkoff’s interview with Tucker Carlson. “Why would Russia want to occupy Ukraine?” he asked. “Why would it want to occupy Europe” he wondered, neglecting to observe that Putin has repeatedly said that Ukraine should not exist as a separate country from Russia and that Russia invaded Ukraine with the clear intention of taking over its territory and toppling its pro-western government.
Witkoff also neglected to mention Putin’s past violations of a ceasefire with Ukraine. And he failed to mention Putin’s statements that the fall of the Soviet empire was “the greatest catastrophe of the 20th Century.” Europeans are so alarmed by Russia’s aggression that Finland and Sweden finally joined NATO, and European nations have been furiously increasing their military budgets.
4. Basic Functional Competence
Top Trump national security officials showed massive incompetence in holding a discussion of war plans against the Iran-backed Yemen-based Houthi militia who menace shipping in the Red Sea on a public chat platform, Signal, with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, mistakenly added to the group.
Detailed information on the planned Houthi airstrikes—targets, weapons and attack sequencing—was discussed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who thought “operational security” was in effect. Goldberg opined later that if an enemy had accessed the discussion, it “could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.”
The discussion confirmed the depth of contempt top Trump officials have for European allies. Vice President J.D. Vance wrote “I just hate bailing out the Europeans again,” asserting they benefited more from the attack than the US. Hegseth added “I fully share your contempt for European freeloading. It’s pathetic.” One participant wrote that European allies should remunerate the US the cost of the operation. But Europeans did not request the strikes and US shipping also benefited.
Also in the exchange, Vance said that Trump’s decision to attack Yemen was a “mistaken approach” that could deepen Mideast tensions and that a diplomatic approach would be better.
Trump, many Congressional Republicans and participants on the Signal chat downplayed the seriousness of the leak. Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, claimed to Congressional committees that no classified information was communicated, which one Democratic congressman called a lie. Hegseth and Trump both attacked Goldberg even though Hegseth was responsible for the chat’s contents and who was included in the group.
And then there’s this added dollop of hypocrisy: Commentators note that most of the participants denounced then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for discussing government business on her personal cell phone, some calling for her to be jailed. Trump, his team, and his most vocal supporters seem immune to the self-righteousness.
5. Various and Sundry Brewing Constitutional Crises
A full-blown “constitutional crisis” has not yet emerged in which the Trump administration refuses to obey a US Supreme Court ruling. Trump says he will obey such rulings but in the meantime, has
- violated the Constitutional principle of Separation of Powers by empowering Elon Musk to head an unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, slashing budgets and staff at numerous federal agencies without authorization from Congress, which created the agencies and has sole authority to fund them. Republicans, who control both the House and Senate, have yielded to this power grab, but more than 130 lawsuits have been filed challenging the cuts and other administration policies. Only a few have reached the high court yet. In one case, the Court ruled that Trump could not block reimbursement of $2 billion to contractors who had completed work for USAID. Despite the ruling, the contractors have yet to be paid. The Court also has a challenge before it to Trump’s executive order cancelling ‘birthright citizenship” protected by the 14th Amendment.
- Trump is following his longstanding habit of attacking lower court judges who rule against him. Lately he has called for the impeachment of Chief Judge James Boasberg of the federal district court in Washington, DC, who attempted to halt the deportation to El Salvador of 238 Venezuelans allegedly members of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. The judge had ordered planes carrying the deportees to return to the US while they were still in the air, but they did not.
The judge said the deportees were denied due process of law under the 1789 Alien Enemies Act, which authorizes deportations during wartime. Trump declared that the US had been invaded by the gang, which he said had ties to the government of Venezuela. It’s important to note the 236-year-old law was intended to be used against attacking “nations,” not gangs. In ongoing litigation over the issue, the Justice Department has refused to provide data on the planes’ routes, saying release would harm national security.
No reasonable person can deny that criminal gang members deserve to be deported, but one of those rounded up, Jerce Reyes Barrios, turns out to be a former professional soccer player detained because he had a tattoo misinterpreted as a gang symbol. Family of some other detainees claimed that their sons or husbands were similarly arrested in error.
Whatever the justification for the deportations, it’s chilling that there seems to have been no due process for the deportees. Thus we’re left to solely take Trump’s word that these men were criminals. This effectively makes him cop, prosector and judge–NOT the way American rule of law is supposed to work.
Another legal question, though, is whether the Trump administration should be able to disregard a judge’s order and threaten him with impeachment. Chief Justice John Roberts was sufficiently alarmed that he took the extraordinary step of writing a statement saying impeachment was the wrong remedy for a disagreement between parties and that an appeal to a higher court was the proper remedy.
Meanwhile, Vice President Vance and Deportation Czar Tom Homan have said that the Executive Branch need not obey court rulings. Vance has gone so far as to say that if the Supreme Court ruled against the administration, the President should follow the example of President Andrew Jackson, who (perhaps apocryphally) was said to have declared that “the Chief Justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.” If the administration adopts that view, the nation will get its (likely devastating) “constitutional crisis.”
Stay tuned.
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But other than that, I hear he is nice to his children.
You left out that they’re eliminating FEMA, so it’s “you’re on your own” rather than “we’re all in this together”. Actually, there are too many things to include, but thanks for episode 2 of the Trump Outrage Watch and hitting the highlights. I look forward to the next which could include running for a third term. On an historical note – was this really an accurate depiction of you on SNL in The McLaughlin Group?
Mort
Jonathan Rauch’s Atlantic article this month – One Word Describes Trump – is the best description I’ve read yet for how he thinks and what he is doing. ‘Patrimonialism’ is the term Max Weber used over 100 years ago to describe the primitive mindset of premodern male rulers who treat their countries or fiefdoms as possessions and extensions of their households. They rule by impulse and fiat and their targets are any bureaucracies, institutions and experts who might limit their control. Weber considered them anachronisms which were incapable of running a complex, modern state, but he underestimated their longevity and variety: Tribal states and organized crime families to name two. Putin and Orban are two state examples., now joined by Trump.
From this understanding it’s important to realize that Trump’s goal is to actually destroy these institutions and experts and place unqualified hacks and lackies in leadership so that he can rule by impulse without challenge.
The primary weaknesses of patrimonialism are corruption and incompetence, which we have already witnessed in abundance. Rauch advises that a foundation for a democratic oppositional response should relentlessly highlight these failings, as more voters understand and dislike corrupt behavior than abstractions like saving the Constitution 🙁
Aside: Our much-loved Ralph Munro founded the Institute for Civic Education at WWU in hopes that we may once again train young people to be informed citizens.