Defending Witches Since 2005.
The technology to use ordinary transport planes, like the C-130, as cruise missile launchers, basically as bombers, is no longer vaporware.
This could vastly increase the capacity of the Air Force to deliver missiles and bombs, for example, in a hypothetical conflict like trying to sink ships invading Taiwan from mainland China, or in the early days of the Iraq War.
So, we are a little more than ten weeks into Trump 2.0 and Trump's "honeymoon period" is pretty much over.
It was definitely a "shock and awe" approach that involved a manic frenzy of efforts to shut down already approved Congressional funds, shut down Congressionally established government agencies, lay off employees without a right to do so, unilaterally disavow collective bargaining agreements with unions that are already in place, to invoke wartime immigration laws when we aren't in a war, to use a law that his sister as a federal judge declared unconstitutional to revoke the visas of legal immigrants, to unconstitutionally claim that birthright citizenship doesn't apply to children of illegal immigrants, to give illegal access to government protected confidential data to Elon Musk who is illegally leading a department not authorized by Congress without Senate approval, and more and more and more.
He's basically declared war on Greenland (and by extension Denmark and NATO), Canada, and Panama. He's stupidly tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali mountain in Alaska. He's banned the Associated Press from White House press events.
Trump is trying to ban "DEI" in absurd ways not authorized by law in the federal government, among every school and college in the U.S., and by bullying private companies and law firms. He's stripped references to women and minorities from government websites. He is engaged in personal vendettas with large law firms that he has no right to launch. He has pardoned the January 6 criminals, many of whom have promptly gone out and committed more crimes or gotten themselves killed. He has taken Russia's side, to a great extent, in the Ukraine War (including a U.N. vote on the legality of Russia's invasion of Ukraine). He has launched a trade war with the entire world, violating a trade treaty with Mexico and Canada that he himself negotiated. He has disregarded at least two court orders pushing us into a constitutional crisis and is trying to invoke the "state secrets doctrine" where it does not apply to cover up one of those cases.
He has created havoc and greatly degraded the functioning of almost every federal government agency. His national security team has inadvertently leaked confidential attack plans to a journalist and one other person who wasn't supposed to have access.
Thirteen countries have issued travel advisories for the U.S., and interruptions of university grants and scientific grants and illegal revocation of student visas is irrevocably destroying long term scientific research projects, undermining a generation of scientists, and undermining the status of the U.S. as a leading provider of quality higher education.
Tesla, a major recipient of government funds, has seen its sales tank worldwide because Musk endorses Nazis and his Cybertruck's quality is awful, so bad that almost all of them have been recalled (the 8th recall so far for them) and its deaths per passenger mile are greater than the Ford Pinto. All of the world, Teslas and their dealers are the subject to protests and vandalism. Insurance companies won't insure Cybertrucks anymore. Musk himself has lost hundreds of billions of dollars of personal wealth as a result. Countries across the world are also ending contracts with his Starlink system. And, Musk's SpaceX company has had high profile exploding rocket failures. Trump made an illegal Tesla ad in front of the White House to bail out his "co-President."
The stock market is crashing. Lockheed Martin may be losing large numbers of F-35 sales now that Trump has changed geopolitical sides (over the opposition over even about 70% of Republicans as well as everyone else). American liquor companies are laying off workers because Canada has boycotted them. Farmers across the nation are in crisis as Trump's anti-immigrant efforts make headlines keeping people away from work and as funds for programs for them are frozen and tariffs are destroying their export sales and making things that they import more expensive.
While he had to withdraw a handful of appointments, almost all of his executive branch appointees who have faced Senate confirmation have been approved, including a great many who are patently unqualified to do their jobs and actively want to undermine the laws of the United States government that they are charged with carrying out.
Scores of lawsuits have been filed to enjoin his Executive Orders which are frequently unconstitutional or unauthorized by the relevant laws or contrary to existing laws. Many of those lawsuits have been successful at the preliminary stage.
Congress has been pretty passive. Republicans are mostly silent even though many do not like what Trump is doing, and Democrats have been largely ineffectual.
Trump's approval rates have fallen and are net negative and lower than any President other than himself in his first term at this point in his term of office. While Republicans still approve strongly of him, 46% of independents strongly disapprove of him and another 8-11% or so disapprove, but not "strongly." Democrats, of course, almost unanimously strongly disapprove.
One Democrat in a Pennsylvania special election won a seat that has been held by Republicans for decades by large margins. Two vacancy elections in Florida for Congressional seats saw the GOP margin of victory dramatically reduced. Despite dumping more than $20 million of Musk's personal funds and money from Musk companies into a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, much of its for outright bribes to vote his way, his candidate lost to a liberal by about ten percentage points.
Needless to say, Trump, his press secretary, and his cabinet members are spewing absurd and outrageous lies with no foundation in the truth at all many times a day as justification for policies that make no sense.
At this point the questions are whether and to what extent the wildly destructive actions of Trump 2.0 can be stopped, and if so how, whether democratic government will continue in the United States, and if this eventually ends, what will it take to recover from and deal with all of the damage that Trump has done.
Trump has gone much farther than many of his supporters believed that he would. If free and fair Congressional elections are held in 2026, there is a good chance that the GOP could lose its thin majorities in the House and in the Senate, and its coalitions there are already starting to fray.