Unnecessary pain, caused by Musk & Trump in order to create wealth for a few, by creating unnecessarily unhealthy society.
In 2025 the Republicans in charge of the United States of America are not the conservatives they call themselves; they are the dangerous ideological radicals Burke feared. They are abruptly dismantling a government that has kept the United States relatively prosperous, secure, and healthy for the past 80 years. In its place, they are trying to impose a government based in the idea that a few men should rule.
The Trump administration’s hits to the economy have monopolized the news this week, but its swing away from Europe and toward Russia, antagonizing allies and partners while fawning over authoritarians like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, is also a radical stand, and one that seems likely to destabilize American security. Former allies have expressed concern over sharing intelligence with the U.S. in the future, and yesterday, 34 army leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, Japan, and Australia met in Paris without inviting the United States.
The wholesale destruction of the U.S.A.’s advanced medical research, especially cancer research, by firing scientists, canceling grants, banning communications and collaboration, and stopping travel is also radical and seems unlikely to leave Americans healthier than before.
Yesterday, news broke that the administration canceled $800 million worth of grants to Johns Hopkins University, one of the nation’s top research universities in science and medicine. Meanwhile, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cast doubt on the safe, effective measles vaccine as the disease continues to spread across the Southwest.
Today, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin boasted that the administration is taking 31 actions to roll back environmental protections. Those include regulations about electric vehicles and pollution from coal-fired plants. The administration intends to rescind the EPA’s 2009 finding that the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change endanger public health. That finding is the legal argument for regulations governing car and truck emissions and power plants.
Also today, the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees supplemental food programs, announced it was cutting about $1 billion in funding that enables schools and food banks to buy directly from local farms and ranches. This will hit farmers and producers as well as children and food-insecure families.
In place of the system that has created relative stability for almost a century, Republicans under President Donald Trump and his sidekick billionaire Elon Musk are imposing a government that is based in the idea that a government that works to make people safe, prosperous, and healthy is simply ripping off wealthy people. Asked if he felt sorry for those losing their jobs in the government purges, Trump told NBC News, without evidence: “Sure I do. I feel very badly…but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”
The administration promises that it is eliminating “waste, fraud, and corruption,” but Judd Legum of Popular Information today launched the “Musk Watch DOGE Tracker,” which shows that Musk has overstated the savings he claims by at least 92%, with the warning that since these identified cuts are illegal and unconstitutional—Congress appropriates money and writes the laws for how it’s spent, and courts have agreed that the executive branch has to execute the laws as they are written—the contracts might not be canceled at all.
That the administration knows it is not operating on the up-and-up seems clear from its attempts to hide what it is doing. It has taken weeks for courts to get the administration to say who is running the “Department of Government Efficiency” and what the body actually is. The White House has tried to characterize Musk as a senior advisor to the president to shield him from questioning.
But today, in response to a lawsuit by 14 attorneys general from Democratic-dominated states arguing that Musk is acting unconstitutionally, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Musk and DOGE to turn over their records and answer questions, giving them three weeks to comply.
On Tuesday, remaining staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) received an email under the name of acting executive secretary Erica Carr at USAID telling them to shred or burn agency records, despite strict laws about the preservation of federal documents. “Haphazardly shredding and burning USAID documents and personnel files seems like a great way to get rid of evidence of wrongdoing when you’re illegally dismantling the agency,” said Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two lawsuits are already challenging the order.
And the corruption in the administration was out in the open yesterday. After Trump advertised Elon Musk’s cars at the White House, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman of the New York Timesreported that Musk “has signaled to President Trump’s advisers in recent days that he wants to put $100 million into groups controlled by the Trump political operation.” This is separate from Musk’s own political action committee, which dropped almost $300 million into the 2024 election and which is now pouring money into next month’s election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The government that Trump and Musk are destroying, with the complicity of their party, is popular, and Republican members of Congress are apparently unwilling to have to vote on the policies that are putting their radical ideology into place. In an extraordinary move yesterday, House Republicans made it impossible for Congress to challenge Trump’s tariffs.
My 2 cents:
The Constitution gives to Congress the right to challenge Trump’s budget. The Republican Party is giving up their rights. The Democrats are now forcing them to confront a budget that destroys Americans health and well being.
Why do we have to suffer to make a few people wealthier? This is un American.
DOGE has not found fraud. He has uncovered all our personal data that we deemed safe and secure in an illegal and unconstitutional manner and without any knowledge of how our Agencies function .
What is causing debt is our debt service. I would suggest, if Trump wants to find waste, look at the Dept of Defense and their 10 yr contracts.
Stop destroying our Health and Welfare Systems, EPA, Agriculture, Education and Cancer Research.