Tag: Law enforcement
Disgrace everywhere you look
Less than two weeks in, the Trump Administration is proving more malicious, less competent, and more destructive than we imagined. The President can’t even pretend to mourn the victims of a plane crash. He needed to parade his racism in front of the cameras as well by blaming the crash on diversity. It turns out the Federal Aviation Administration initiated its diversity program during his own first term. His tariffs on Mexico and Canada will jack up prices and deflate the stock market by Monday.
The firing of dozens of experience prosecutors will hamper the Justice Department for years. The consequent lawsuits will cost more than the money saved by reducing the payroll. And the incompetents he’ll hire as replacements will be mostly white sycophantic males with little experience and no integrity.
The disgrace in the Senate
Some of the worst of Trump’s minions have been testifying this week in the Senate. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel lied and insulted their ways through hours of painful fraud and bluster. The results were embarrassing.
RFK Jr. demonstrated no knowledge and no aptitude for Health and Human Services Secretary. Gabbard couldn’t call Edward Snowden a traitor because she had defended his theft and publication of top secret documents. I wouldn’t call him a traitor either until a court tries and convicts him. But she could have just that: he should come home for trial. Kash Patel just denied saying things he has said. The FBI will be Trump’s personal police force by the time he is through with it.
The disgrace at the borders
Trump is having a hard time on immigration. Not many people are crowding the border, because Biden already fixed that. Trump is flying a few immigrants to their home countries at high cost, without demonstrating they are criminals. And to get some more attention he promises to store 30,000 of them at Guantanamo. The US Government found it difficult to imprison 800 there, most of whom turned out not to be terrorists. The GTMO military commission has convicted only eight. The yearly cost of incarceration was $10 million per detainee.
Meanwhile, the Administration has canceled permission for fully cleared refugees from Afghanistan and other war zones to enter the US. It continues to lump asylum seekers with criminals. And it has canceled temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
The disgrace in the budget
Trump initially stopped all Federal grants and contracts, including for major programs like Medicaid and for foreign assistance. That it turned out upset Republicans, as a lot of the money goes to red states:
So now they have lifted the general stop order but are slow walking specific programs through approval. The result is enormous confusion inside the government and the organizations that receive money from it. Everyone is working feverishly to get exceptions. That is a tremendous waste of resources.
Trump tried once before to stop foreign assistance, to Ukraine in 2019. The House of Representatives impeached him for that. Congress appropriates money. It is the President’s responsibility to execute what the Congress says it is for. He has no power to divert the money without at least informing Congress, which of course Trump has not done.
What he wants to do with the money is worse than his effort to slow its disbursement. He wants to extend the tax cuts for the rich approved in 2017. He also wants to pay for prestige projects his billionaire friends have been advocating. Those include sending people to Mars and buying Greenland. No doubt they will also convince him to provide cheap energy for the Artificial Intelligence projects.
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Trump has gone way too far
I haven’t commented yet on Donald Trump’s nominations most egregious nominations. He wants Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense and Kash Patel to be FBI Director. These are outrageous choices. I’ll be horrified if the Senate confirms them.
A drunk, abusing, corrupt Christian Zionist
Hegseth abuses women, including those who worked for him. He is a Christian nationalist and white supremacist. He drinks to excess and uses funds for illicit purposes. “Kill all Muslims” is something he shouted when inebriated.
This particular combination of disqualifications is remarkable even in Trump’s Cabinet nominees. Only Matt Gaetz comes close. He wisely withdrew from Trump’s nomination to be Attorney General.
My guess is Hegseth will not make it through the “advice and consent” of the Senate. The Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes there. The position requires sobriety and decorum. Hegseth is so blatantly unqualified that I hope more than a handful will oppose him.
A vindictive sycophant
Patel is a different problem. The President appoints the FBI Director for 10 years. Christopher Wray, the incumbent, has another 2 years on his appointment. He has tried to restore the FBI’s professional non-partisan cred. That is precisely why Trump wants him out.
Instead, the President-elect wants someone who will do his bidding. That will include both restraint in pursuing Trump’s friends and supporters as well as ferocious aggression in pursuing his enemies. Patel would do just that. He plans to purge the Bureau’s upper levels, close its headquarters, and send agents out to pursue Trump’s antagonists.
Lots of Republican Senators will welcome such an effort. It will protect them and counter what they see as Democratic bias at the Bureau. The only hope is that a few will see the risk in such a partisan extremist. I am not an FBI enthusiast, but Patel will make the Bureau an instrument of retribution, not law enforcement. For at least half the country that will be unacceptable.
Better worse?
Some would argue that worse is better. Hegseth and Patel will no doubt, if confirmed, do things that will embarrass and even ruin Trump. I don’t buy that, even if true. The damage to America’s image in the world and to its its institutions of defense and justice is too great. The Senate needs to reject Hegseth and Patel. Better even before they have hearings, like Gaetz.
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