Deplorable Trump Team Tactics

Trump has engaged in a "flood the zone" strategy of taking outrageous and unprecedented actions on so many front that his opponents are overwhelmed. As the secondary headline of one analysis explained: ""Trump starts presidency by mocking rule of law and stigmatizing trans Americans" 

This post highlights some of those actions.

* Trump ran for office on immediately lowering the price of eggs. The price of eggs has soared since he took office. He says he can't do anything about it and neither he nor his supporters seem to care.

* Produce prices are at risk of rising in the near future since migrant farm workers are failing to show up, en masse, in states like California, Texas, and Florida, and due to threatened broad 25% tariffs on imports to the U.S. from Mexico, Canada, and other countries (in violation of free trade treaties that Trump himself negotiated in his first term). 

* Gasoline prices are also up for now.

* Trump rescinded an Executive Order from President Biden that limited the price of certain prescription drugs resulting in immediate drug price inflation for large number of patients in the U.S.

* Trump pardoned the more than 1,000 people who committed crimes while storming the capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021, some of whom violently assaulted police officers (to the disgust of a police officer's union that supported him in the election).  One pardoned January 6 criminal was since killed in a traffic stop after pointing a gun at a traffic officer, and another has been sentenced to ten years in jail for a deadly DUI. He also made other dubious pardons. 

* Trump has threatened to conquer Greenland and the Panama Canal without any Congressional authorization or legal basis to do so, and to use economic pressure to force Canada to become the 51st U.S. state. In addition to blatantly violating international law, this is also contrary to U.S. law. These proposals are unpopular with the U.S. public (as well as the people of the affected countries) and would blow up the NATO alliance.

* Trump has lied about what he has done with regard to water supplies in California.

* Trump is using the FCC to try to punish National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, formally, over concerns about sponsorships, but really because he doesn't like the fact that their truthful news reporting and the decent values of PBS children's programming impeded his ability to lie unchecked and promote hate.

* Trump baselessly blamed Biden and affirmative action hiring for a crash (see also here) between a regional jet with 64 people on board and a U.S. military helicopter with 3 people on board that killed all 67 people near Reagan National Airport in the District of Columbia. Poor training for military helicopter crews (who were outside their designed flight zone), understaffing of air traffic controllers (only two were on duty when there should have been four), and the somewhat reduced experience of regional jet pilots compared to larger commercial aircraft pilots, were far more likely to be the real causes. Trump had already gutted federal air safety measures, left the FAA without a director, and disrupted federal employees after less than two weeks in office when this happened, although realistically none of these things actually caused this crash.

* "The Pentagon’s intelligence agency paused observances of Pride Month, Black History Month, Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Holocaust Days of Remembrance, Juneteenth and other cultural events, as federal agencies scramble to try to conform to President Trump’s repudiation of diversity programs." From the New York Times.

* Trump repealed Executive Order 11246, 59 years, 3 months, 27 days after it was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson on September 24, 1965, which established requirements for non-discriminatory practices in hiring and employment on the part of U.S. government contractors.

* Federal agencies have been forbidden from communicating scientific or public health information to the public. "The Trump administration, moving quickly to clamp down on health and science agencies, has canceled a string of scientific meetings and instructed federal health officials to refrain from all public communications, including upcoming reports focused on the escalating bird flu crisis in the U.S." As one doctor explained on social media:

Trump just directed the CDC, NIH and FDA to halt all external communications. That means to stop giving scientific reports, health advisories, website updates, etc. In simple terms, if there was a salmonella outbreak with massive food recall needed right now, they wouldn't be allowed to announce it. Scared yet? The order came in Tuesday AM and without a reason or a timeline.

* Trump has started the process to remove the U.S. from the World Health Organization, despite a high risk in the near future of a bird flu epidemic. 

* Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox news commentator, was confirmed with a 50-50 votes with all Democrats and three Republicans opposing him and Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie, after credible testimony at his confirmation hearings revealed that he was a seriously impaired alcoholic and a rapist, among other concerns. 

Mr. Hegseth’s selection by President Trump and the confirmation process were complicated by a claim of sexual assault and accusations of abusive behavior, public drunkenness and fiscal mismanagement of two nonprofit veterans groups.

In a sworn statement submitted to the Senate on Tuesday, a former sister-in-law of Mr. Hegseth’s described him as frequently intoxicated and “abusive” toward his second wife. Mr. Hegseth, 44, has denied the account, along with other allegations that have dogged his nomination.

And on Thursday, the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, shared written answers to questions she put to Mr. Hegseth, in which he disclosed that he paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.

He has said that encounter was consensual, and he was never charged with a crime.

A handful of Republicans had said privately that the new allegations in the affidavit from Danielle Diettrich Hegseth, the former wife of Mr. Hegseth’s brother, were concerning. But in the end, only Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski and Mr. McConnell voted with Democrats against his confirmation.

Ms. Hegseth said after the vote that she had submitted her affidavit only because she had been assured that it would sway key votes. “There are many reasons women are reluctant to come forward, by name, and tell the truth about a powerful man like him,” she said. “What happened today will make women who have experienced abuse and mistreatment even less forthcoming.”

His tattoos suggest neo-Nazi or white supremacist leanings.

* Confirmation hearings for failed third-party Presidential candidate RFK, Jr. as U.S. Health And Human Services Secretary show him to be profoundly unqualified and dangerous. His personal behavior is also deeply concerning due to credible sexual assault allegations against him and weird incidents with dead animals. He also has admitted that some of his brain was eaten away by a worm.

* Trump's Office of Personnel Management nominee is on record as publicly stating that he is a "raging msogynist". 

Andrew Kloster has a new job in the Trump administration, as reported by the Project On Government Oversight. Kloster has landed as the new general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management. The New York University Law graduate has made the rounds in conservative legal circles, previously working at OPM in the first Trump term, becoming a prominent 2020 election denier, and serving as general counsel for congressman Matt Gaetz (FL-01). . . . "It wasn’t even a long time ago, so it’s hard to even disingenuously chalk it up to youthful indiscretion. In 2023(!) he was tweeting that he identified as a “raging misogynist,” saying, “I’m 100% women respecter precisely because I’m a raging misogynist. I’m so kind you’ll want to kill yourself and die, which is the goal.” Around that time he also tweeted, “I need a woman who looks like she got punched.” Which was only a few months after being served a temporary restraining order. He referred to “literally all women” as annoying liberals. In 2012, he also commented on a Volokh Conspiracy article that, “Consent is probably modern society’s most pernicious fetish.” But it isn’t only women that the new counsel for the federal government’s HR department has attacked online. He also wrote, “Slaves owe us reparations,” and “slavery was voluntary.” He called Chinese people uncivilized and compared them to raccoons. Oh, and he also seemed to encourage a civil war.

* Kash Patel, Trump's nominee for FBI director, has starting suing people for defamation for opposing his nomination, something that is a patently frivolous strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). 

* Trump’s Press Secretary has been credibly accused of allegedly pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal campaign donations.

* Key Trump advisor Elon Musk is a big supporter of what is basically a neo-Nazi party in Germany. He's also a big backer of the modern fascist party in Italy. Musk has also been accused of making Nazi salutes at political functions in the U.S.

* Trump is persecuting former Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, without any semblance of due process or justification, removing his security clearance, ending a security detail established due to credible threats from Iranian assassinations, and removing pictures of him from the Pentagon halls, because Milley put obeying the law and doing is job properly ahead of loyalty to Trump. The New York Times notes that:

Donald J. Trump had previously said he deserved to be executed for treason after the general apologized for appearing with Trump in Lafayette Park near the White House after the removal of civilians protesting the murder of George Floyd.

A Pentagon statement said that Hegseth had directed the Defense Department’s inspector general to review whether General Milley should be demoted in retirement.

* Trump has threatened to bring criminal prosecutions as retribution against state and local officials who defy his immigration plans (something that is illegal).

* Trump's Executive Order purporting to freeze all U.S. government grants and loans created widespread chaos and gave rise to a quick injunction from a judge. Trump quickly rescinded the order in one of the first big wins for Democrats since he took office. More legal analysis here and here.

* Trump has attempted to suspend military aid to Ukraine that has already been authorized by Congress. It isn't clear to me if this is part of the order that has since been rescinded.

* Unilaterally and without any legal authority to do so, the "Trump administration offered roughly two million federal workers the option to resign but be paid through the end of September. It is unclear what authority the Trump administration has to offer a payout to effectively the entire federal civilian work force." Elon Musk had ridiculously claimed that cutting the federal work force by 5-10% could reduce the budget by $100 billion, which this vastly overestimates the cost saving that could be achieved.

* Fox News is making up out of whole cloth the false claim that the U.S. funding $50 million of condoms in Gaza.

* Trump's plan for the Gaza Strip is to "clean out the whole thing." 

* Trump's press release staff can't spell the name of Colombia, the country upon which he sought to impose tariffs for its resistance to the manner in which he deported its citizens, something his legal authority to do is dubious. See also here.

* Deportations are being conducted with U.S. Air Force planes, something arguably in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

* Trump's Executive Order purporting to end birthright citizenship is patently unconstitutional and a federal judge in Washington State has stayed it, expressing exasperation at the Justice Department lawyers trying to defend it.

* As part of Trump's mass deportation sweep, a grandmother, mother and baby grandson, who were all U.S. citizens, were detained in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for speaking Spanish in public by immigration officials, and weren't released until birth certificates and proof and citizenship were provided.

* ICE Agents have staked out an ambulance bay at UC-Health Anschutz (the main university hospital in metro Denver) now that Trump has directed them to ignore historical restrictions on immigration enforcement in sensitive areas like hospitals, courts, and churches.

* Leading Christians including the Pope, a Catholic Cardinal, and the Episcopal Bishop in the National Cathedral have decried his harsh immigration tactics:

* Trump's unilateral attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, is unsurprisingly, receiving strong pushback, although Google seems ready to accept it if it is officially sanctioned by a U.S. place naming board.

* Trump, illegally and without the legal authority to do so, "signed an executive order on Tuesday taking steps to end gender-affirming medical treatments for children and teenagers under 19, directing agencies to take a variety of steps to curtail surgeries, hormone therapy and other regimens. The order continued to chip away at social protections for transgender and intersex people, coming one day after Mr. Trump directed the Pentagon to re-evaluate whether anyone who received gender-related medical treatments should be permitted to serve in the military."

* Trump is illegally and unilaterally banning transgender people from U.S. military service.

* Trump is supporting a "U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will open an investigation into Denver Public Schools for “discriminating against its female students” by creating an all-gender bathroom at East High School[.]"" as a way to continue scapegoating of transgender students.

* "The Trump administration has instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing HIV medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics." (NYT).

* A right wing summary of Trump's Executive Orders is available here.

* Trump is suggesting that he is not term-limited, blatantly contradicting the constitution, and showing grave disrespect for is duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution and for democracy.

* Incidentally, Trump is the least popular President in the history of polling, for a second time in a row, at the start of his Presidential term.