Hardship Incoming 🤬🤯✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤬🤯

🤬🤬: It turns out that Elon Musk wasn’t lying when he said that a lot of Americans would face "temporary hardship" if Trump won the election and appointed him to government.  If anything, Musk was soft pedaling what would happen because by temporary, Musk, Trump and their Project 2025 kindred souls likely means years and by hardship they mean living without health care, no food for the needy, no heat and rent subsidies, polluted air, no food inspections, cuts in education and school loan programs, loss of jobs, and well, you get the picture.  Yesterday, the Trump administration issued an order “temporarily” freezing $3 trillion of funding for 2600 programs across government.  The list of programs was so comprehensive that per a list published in the NY Times it included virtually every federal initiative that distributes money, even some parts of Medicare and interest on some government debt, two things that are supposed to be untouchable.  The bull 💩 justification for the “temporary” freeze, was to give Trump’s MAGA minions time to rout out anything that advances “Marxist equity, transgenderism and the Green New Deal social engineering policies,” but really, it’s about shrinking government to free up money for tax cuts to the wealthiest. Agencies were actually sent questionnaires that asked whether their programs promoted “gender ideology,” whatever that is.  During the day, the federal financing portals that states and other grant recipients routinely access for essential payments for payroll and services were closed, leaving Medicaid reimbursements and payments to health care providers, including hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors, and education programs like Head Start in the lurch. Grant-receiving organizations, basically all organizations that receive any federal funds,  started cancelling patient appointments and classes, telling patients and students that without money, they couldn’t serve them.  To be clear, that meant the cancellation of things like medical tests and pre-school classes, so no diabetes care and nowhere for the kids to go when parents are due at work.  The pushback was loud and somewhat effective so naturally Trump’s people lied about what was impacted, saying that they never meant to shut down the Medicaid payment portal, even though their plans had been in the works for some time and to be fair, not that they ever are, their shutdown order was poorly written and unclear maybe because abject loyalty rather than academic excellence was a hiring criteria.  Trump’s spokes-liar Karoline Leavitt, this term’s Sarah Huckabee/Kellyanne Conway chimera, even asserted that those claiming that the portals were down were lying, a bit of a problem when some of those timid red state Governors from places like Louisiana meekly noted that they too were affected, not all that surprising since red states get more government funding than blue states.  The “temporary” aid shutdown also affected overseas programs, including the wildly successful PEPFAR program started up by George W Bush.  PEPFAR provides AIDS medicine to countries in Africa but apparently preventing the spread of AIDs and the emergence of new strains is a Marxist and/or gender ideology thing?  The pushback to the avalanche of 💩 was somewhat effective.  By the end of the day, the Medicaid portal was going back online, the State Department had agreed to continue providing HIV drugs, and in response to legal action by blue state officials and affected organizations, District of Columbia Federal Judge Loren AliKhan had temporarily blocked the effort to freeze the federal grants and loans affected by Trump’s action pending a hearing to be held on February 3.  And as if the stripping of government services wasn’t enough trauma for one day, taking a page from Musk and his X (Twitter) escapade, the Trump administration is trying to convince as many government employees as possible to voluntarily resign in exchange for eight months of severance though it’s not clear that the offer or the promise of severance is legal, there are no plans to replace any of those providing critical services and as you may recall, Musk reneged on a lot of his severance promises when he dismantled X.  Probably worth noting, that X having service outages is a minor inconvenience, but Social Security checks stuck in the ether together with tax refunds and Air Traffic Control going dark, a whole lot more concerning.  Also, after banning open transgender soldiers from serving in the military, Trump went one step further, banning all gender affirming care, including hormone treatments for anyone 19 or under.  With suicide hotlines among the organizations being unfunded the consequences are going to be awful to watch. Keeping with that theme, the VA also said that it was freezing its outreach programs to homeless vets because they also target LGBTQ ones.  Welcome to Trump 2.0, meaner than ever, lots of chaos, topped off with extra servings of evil intent and lots of lawsuits.  And lastly, if you are wondering where the Democrats are in all this, it looks like they’re finally mobilizing.  Expect to hear a lot more from them, and, among other things, expect them to take a page from the Tommy Tuberville playbook, locking up the Senate in procedural delays the way he refused to allow military promotions and by voting against far more of Trump’s cabinet picks.   

The Kennedy Chronicles: The usually reticent Ambassador Caroline Kennedy has had enough of her cousin Bobby and doesn’t want the rest of us to have to live through her family’s trauma.  Yesterday, she told members of the Senator that he’s a predator and a liar, even talking about how he pushed some of her other cousins, already traumatized by the loss of her father JFK and theirs, the real RFK, into drug addictions, some of which led to some of them dying from overdoses.  She also noted that though he profits financially from warning of the “dangers” of vaccines, he’s had his own kids vaccinated.  Cousin Bobby’s Senate confirmation hearings begin today, as do hearings for Howard Lutnick for Commerce Secretary and one- time interim Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler for the Small Business Administration, one of those departments that was impacted by yesterday’s grant and loan freeze. In other Senate news, Michigan’s well respected Democratic Senator Gary Peters surprised many by announcing that he won’t run for reelection in 2026.  Among the names being bandied about as a possible replacement is former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who resides in Michigan! Governor Gretchen Whitmer says she’s not interested probably because she’s more focused on running for president in 2028.   

And More 💩: Even Iowa’s Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is questioning the legitimacy of Trump’s firing of eighteen Inspectors General.  Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter also signed by ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin, to Trump noting that he failed to provide the legally required thirty days-notice and that he is also supposed to provide substantive rationales for each dismissal, something other than he just doesn’t like them because they’re members of the Deep State, not that anyone expects Trump to care about such a letter. More lawsuits are incoming.  Pete Hegseth is now Defense Secretary.  We don’t know if he downed a six pack to celebrate his confirmation, but we do know that he’s stripped former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley of his security detail, revoked his security clearance, took down another one of his portraits, and is now threatening to take one the retired General’s four stars away.  Retribution much?  As to Pete Hegseth’s confirmation, the Wall Street Journal reported that Danielle Hegseth, Pete’s former sister-in-law who provided a sworn statement about his habitual drinking and abusive behavior had been encouraged to do so by North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis who had assured her that her statement could result in a critical mass of Republican Senators voting against Hegseth’s confirmation.  Not only did that not happen but Tilles voted for confirmation, essentially throwing Danielle Hegseth under the bus while also exposing her to incoming hate and threats from legions of Trump and Hegseth MAGA supporters. Remember that when Tilles’ Democratic opponent, whoever that turns out to be, is raising funds for the 2026 campaign.

Fog:  Hamas has formally notified Israel that eight of the 26 Israeli hostages to be released over the coming weeks are dead. Hamas’ list of the dead confirms with Israeli security’s intelligence but the names of the dead whose bodies will be returned and will count towards the required hostage return for the first part of the ceasefire have not been publicly released.  Two Israeli women, Arbel Yehud and Agam Berger, both citizens rather than soldiers, are scheduled to be released tomorrow along with a third unidentified hostage. Israeli hospitals are also preparing for the additional release of ten Thai nationals who may be released in a side deal.

#BringThemAllHomeNow