Health officials issue warning as dangerous disease reaches ‘endemic levels’: ‘It’s not if you’re going to get it, it’s when’
Katie Dupere – October 15, 2025
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A region in West Virginia is experiencing “endemic levels” of Lyme disease. It’s a clear example of how warming global temperatures are transforming some regions into breeding grounds for diseases.
What’s happening?
Ohio County — which has a population of about 40,000 — is experiencing an alarming number of Lyme disease cases. As of mid-September, there were almost 300 reported cases. Health officials warn the illness is now so widespread that cases are no longer investigated but simply recorded.
“It’s not if you’re going to get it, it’s when you’re going to get it,” Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department Administrator Howard Gamble told local news affiliate WTOV 9.
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted to humans through the bite of infected ticks. It can cause fever, fatigue, joint pain, and a characteristic “bull’s-eye” rash. If left untreated, Lyme may lead to serious complications affecting the heart, joints, and nervous system.
Ohio County officials attribute the surge to unstable environmental conditions and human proximity to animal habitats that support tick populations. And those factors can be directly tied to rising global temperatures.
Spring and summer are peak tick seasons — but health officials warn cases are not expected to decrease significantly in the fall.
Why is this rise in Lyme cases important?
As Lyme disease cases climb, the rising number offers a warning that our warming planet is reshaping where and how diseases emerge.
The overheating of our planet — driven by the continuous use of dirty energy — creates ideal conditions for vector-borne illnesses like Lyme to thrive. Warmer temperatures throughout the year mean that ticks — particularly black-legged (or deer) ticks — are active for a longer period. This makes it more likely that a person will contract the disease.
With warmer temperatures, ticks can also survive winters farther north and at higher elevations. They can expand into regions that were once too cold for their survival.
Rising temperatures and destructive deforestation impact the habitats of tick-carrying animals, like deer and mice, pushing them closer to humans. Together, these changes create more opportunities for ticks to spread — and for people to come into contact with them.
What’s being done about this rise in Lyme cases?
Ohio County officials told WTOV 9 that early detection and treatment remain critical in the treatment of Lyme. Delays can lead to severe complications affecting the heart and nervous system.
To prevent contracting Lyme, it’s important to avoid tick bites. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends staying on cleared trails when hiking and using insect repellent when outdoors. After coming indoors, shower and check for ticks. Treating pets for Lyme is also key to their protection and yours.
In the days following, watch for a bull’s-eye rash and flu-like symptoms. In more severe infections, stiff neck, joint swelling, or facial palsy may occur. If any symptoms develop, contact your doctor immediately.
While short-term prevention is key, scientists are working on tools and technologies for early detection of Lyme and other tick-borne pathogens.
There is also ongoing research globally to develop a Lyme disease vaccine. As that work continues, scientists are tracking climate and ecological changes to better understand and plan for tick-borne disease risk.
“I Left The US 15 Years Ago”: Expats Are Revealing The “We’re Being Scammed” Realizations They Had After Moving Abroad
Dannica Ramirez – September 12, 2025
Last year, we featured a viral TikTok that compared the cost of living in the US and Australia, which brought up the notion that “America is a scam.” Many people (like myself) were shocked by the numbers, but those in the BuzzFeed Community who’ve either moved to or from the US to another country knew about the differences all too well. Here are some of the most insightful and surprising “America is a scam” stories people shared:
1.”Credit scores. An arbitrary number that you have no control over can bar you from living in a decent area, landing a job, getting fair rates for insurance and loans, and even costing you opportunities to improve your life. Full disclosure: I left the US nearly 15 years ago. I now live in Poland and own my own business with full civil rights and privileges.”
2.”I lived in Northern England for a time on a student work abroad visa. I was in need of birth control, so I went to the doctor. I was offered an implant that wasn’t available in the US until years later. When setting up my appointment, I asked about the out-of-pocket cost, and the staff looked at me like I had grown two heads. There was no cost, of course. When my British roommate later became pregnant with her children years later, her doctor did house calls. She also received a year of maternity leave with a guarantee she could return to her job. Living abroad did a ton to break the spell of ‘American exceptionalism’ and showed me how a ‘we’re #1’ philosophy could blind us to subpar conditions. When I was young, I wanted to move from the US for positive reasons, like adventure. It saddens me that my desire for it is now due to a seemingly worsening quality of life and a tenuous political situation here at home.”
—Anonymous
3.”I went to Panama on vacation and accidentally went without my asthma inhaler. I had to do was walk into a pharmacy — with no prescription required — and Albuterol was $11. In the US, with a required prescription, it’s about $150.”
4.”I have multiple chronic pain conditions, including a couple of autoimmune diseases, and I had very little pain and no flare-ups in the two weeks I spent in Europe — even with all the sitting on planes and coaches. As soon as I got back to the US, my pain started flaring up again. So, quite literally, the United States makes me sick.”
5.”I paid $2,800/month to live in Los Angeles. Now, I pay $400/month to live in Taipei. My purchasing power is five times greater after I left the US to live in Asia.”
Frazao Studio Latino / Getty Images
—Anonymous
6.”I live in the UK and work in the public sector, which is unionized — holiday leave, healthcare, and retirement packages are all phenomenal. But even better, if I get really sick with something serious, I would get six months of PAID leave. Plus, I would still get all my holiday leave when I get back to work. I don’t have children, but my colleagues are getting a full year or more of maternity leave. America is a definite scam whenever they try to present unions as a ‘bad’ thing for workers. If you can, unionize!”
7.”I lived in Korea for a few years, and I have to say that I never needed a car since public transport is awesome and cheap, and so many people walk. Also, I got really sick once and had to visit the emergency room. I had to get meds, and it was less than $40. Everything is more expensive in the US”
Gerhard Joren / Getty Images
—Erin, 40
8.”I’ve lived in Germany and loved it. I actually felt more at home there than anywhere in the US, and I’ve lived all over America. The pace of life, values, and culture just really suited me. Living in the US can be an awful challenge, especially now that we are NOT doing great. So many of us are suffering under the boot of corporate America and bad government policy. Don’t get me wrong — there are a lot of things I love about my home country and the people: so much natural beauty, Americans’ confidence and can-do spirit, and how unique the country is. However, I’ve thought a lot about moving back to Europe. If I did move back, it would be for the community, connection, and ease, something that the US, unfortunately, is really lacking. No place is perfect, and there are headaches and problems everywhere, but it’s about choosing which ones you can tolerate.”
9.”When people think Europeans don’t want to work and take time off constantly because they’re ‘lazy,’ but Americans are hardworking individuals who help create a great economy. I worked in London for 15 years at some of the fastest-growing companies in Europe, and guess what? They had fast and sustainable growth, all while people used their statutory minimum required vacation time of 30 days per year or more. By the way, why does one of the richest countries in the world have one of the lowest quality of life for its citizens? It makes no sense.”
Mondadori Portfolio / Getty Images
—LS, California
10.”One of my buds retired and lives in Mexico. He pays less than $100 for major car repairs, $300 for rent in a big apartment (with an included cleaning service), and very little for medical treatment. He lives a wonderful, full life. His pension is less than half of what I make, yet he seemingly lives the life while I struggle. It’s warm and beautiful where he lives with plenty of ex-pats. I’ve heard other Americans who’ve retired to Mexico say the same thing. It’s something to think about.”
11.”I’m a Scottish guy who lived in America for a few years. I had insurance covered as part of my visa, and I had a bike accident resulting in a bad head injury. I took an ambulance to the hospital, saw a doctor, got stitches, had a follow-up appointment, got medicated, and the lot. The bill was $25,000.”
12.”I wouldn’t say America is a scam, but the price comparison is jarring. I spent several months in France, and the rent was lower and did not rise rapidly as it does here. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was the cheap availability of high-quality food. Fresh and organic food in France costs about the same as bargain preservative-laden food in the States. You could also go to a nice restaurant without feeling like a total splurge. Plus, the price of the menu was the price you’d pay. France has a really well-developed leisure and tourism industry that benefits from its scale in a way that is not really matched to that of the States.”
—Anonymous
13.”I’ve lived in multiple countries but will use London as my reference since I’ve lived there for 10 years. I returned to the US because of the pandemic, and there are so many scams. First, people do not have free health insurance. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and have the best healthcare, but only if you can afford it. Meanwhile, in the UK, you can pay for private healthcare, but even if you don’t, there’s the NHS (National Health Service). Regardless, everyone has access to a doctor, period. In America, prescription costs vary depending on the drug and your insurance. In London, you either pay for prescriptions or you don’t. All prescriptions cost the same, and birth control is free. I could go on and on, but I’ll stop my anger from building up more than it is.”
Fatcamera / Getty Images
—Mairin, 41, Wisconsin
14.”Food in places like Egypt, Japan, and even countries in Europe is more wholesome and tastier. Come on, America, why the shit food?”
—Anonymous
15.”I moved from the US and now live in Hong Kong. My tax rate is 12%, and my electricity costs less than $500 USD per year. I spend $400 a year on healthcare, $75 a month for public transit, and $15 a month for my phone. My largest expense is my apartment with a part-ocean view, and I pay $2,800 a month, which is a good price for staying outside the city.”
16.”I haven’t moved (yet), but I am in Germany now, and so far, the food is a lot better, ALL the beer is food, public transportation is SO MUCH BETTER, and, from what I’ve seen, most things cost less. Germany also has monetary government help if you have children or older adults in your family. Yep, monthly stipends with no means testing. This is a far cry from the USA, which has absolutely none of that, and where you can just die on the streets if you can’t make it. Really, in about 95% of ways, living in the USA kind of sucks. It does hurt me to admit this, but it’s true.”
—Suzan, 66, Oregon
17.”I have been living in Thailand and Bali this past year, and in both cases, I am far, far ahead of when I lived in the Seattle area in the US. My expenses are around half, and I lack almost nothing except some peccadillo-like things like major music concerts (some are in Bangkok, but that’s not a place I choose to pass through). Further, the culture is so much better — none of the fear and anger that have reared their heads since Trump entered the scene. The people here are so kind, accepting, and joyful. I haven’t even seen a case of road rage! I have no desire to go back to the USA.”
18.”When my daughter was born in Amsterdam, we didn’t find out until she was a few weeks old that she needed corrective heart surgery. Never mind that we didn’t pay anything out of pocket for the birth, but her heart surgery and appointments for it didn’t cost a thing either. If we still lived in the States, we would have been bankrupt, even if we had good insurance.”
—Mark, 43, Netherlands
19.”We are being scammed. One of the biggest differences I noticed when living abroad was that even wealthy people were outspoken about prices. America’s rising cost of living is vastly outpacing inflation — and we accept it without much protest. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Germany, Czechia, and Argentina, where I have local friends and some family. People would tell the servers that the prices were too high, or they’d complain at the supermarket and leave items at the register saying, ‘This is too expensive.’ In America, we’ve been trained to accept things as they are because we are gaslit into thinking it’s OUR fault that we suddenly can’t afford to eat out or go to the hair salon.”
20.”I lived in Mexico my entire adult life and moved back to America in 2022. My salary in Mexico was lower than in dollars, but I had a much higher standard of living there. Healthcare is free unless you choose to go private, and you can still get free healthcare even without a job. Car insurance costs far less, and even the cars are cheaper because they sell more basic models of the same brand. My rent in Mexico was only about 20% of my salary, and it was easy to find plenty of places in a similar price range. In the US, it’s at least 30% of my salary. I’ve realized that in the US, everything is designed to be bigger, fancier, and more expensive.”
—Anonymous
21.”In the late ’90s, I studied in Paris, France. I could pay my tuition, dorm, groceries, and public transportation for 18 months on a $15K US school loan. In 2015, I lived in Quebec, Canada for five months, and my rent in a very nice three-bedroom apartment was $400 CAD a month, with all utilities included. I’ve compared my US salary with friends in Germany, France, and Norway; though my salary is ‘higher,’ they have much lower utility, cellphone, and other costs. Plus, they never had school loans to pay back, and even after taxes, they still had MORE money at the end of the month than me — not to mention the six weeks of vacation every year, parental leave, etc.”
Julian Elliott Photography / Getty Images
“They have walkable cities and towns with sidewalks everywhere, reliable and efficient public transportation, and affordable fresh food. If most Americans understood the stark reality that we are paying into a system with a broken infrastructure — where most of our tax money goes to pay for ‘defense’ — they’d hopefully take their outrage to the polls and vote for better policies. Those in power, however, turn to fearmongering scam tactics to prevent people from demanding more.”
—Stephanie, 50, US
22.”After I moved to America, I realized that how the US presents itself to the rest of the world is bull. There’s a poor healthcare system, no labor laws to get paid for statutory holidays, the wages are a joke compared to the cost of living, and if you’re wealthy, the law is yours to bend. It shocked me to see how the US votes in judges and how fragile the separation of church and state really is! It’s scary living here.”
Trump administration hands over Medicaid recipients’ personal data, including addresses, to ICE
Kimberly Kindy and Amanda Seitz – July 17, 2025
Special needs teacher Deja Nebula sets up an art installation displaying names and faces of people who have been detained, deported, or sent to offshore camps during ICE raids in Southern California, at Olvera Street Plaza in Los Angeles, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)More
WASHINGTON (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the United States, according to an agreement obtained by The Associated Press.
The information will give ICE officials the ability to find “the location of aliens” across the country, says the agreement signed Monday between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement has not been announced publicly.
The extraordinary disclosure of millions of such personal health data to deportation officials is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has repeatedly tested legal boundaries in its effort to arrest 3,000 people daily.
Lawmakers and some CMS officials have challenged the legality of deportation officials’ access to some states’ Medicaid enrollee data. It’s a move, first reported by the AP last month, that Health and Human Services officials said was aimed at rooting out people enrolled in the program improperly.
But the latest data-sharing agreement makes clear what ICE officials intend to do with the health data.
“ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE,” the agreement says.
Such an action could ripple widely
Such disclosures, even if not acted upon, could cause widespread alarm among people seeking emergency medical help for themselves or their children. Other efforts to crack down on illegal immigration have made schools, churches, courthouses and other everyday places feel perilous to immigrants and even U.S. citizens who fear getting caught up in a raid.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon would not respond to the latest agreement. It is unclear, though, whether Homeland Security has yet accessed the information. The department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an emailed statement that the two agencies “are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans.”
The database will reveal to ICE officials the names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers for all people enrolled in Medicaid. The state and federally funded program provides health care coverage program for the poorest of people, including millions of children.
The agreement does not allow ICE officials to download the data. Instead, they will be allowed to access it for a limited period from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, until Sept. 9.
“They are trying to turn us into immigration agents,” said a CMS official did not have permission to speak to the media and insisted on anonymity.
Immigrants who are not living in the U.S. legally, as well as some lawfully present immigrants, are not allowed to enroll in the Medicaid program that provides nearly-free coverage for health services. Medicaid is a jointly funded program between states and the federal government.
But federal law requires all states to offer emergency Medicaid, a temporary coverage that pays only for lifesaving services in emergency rooms to anyone, including non-U.S. citizens. Emergency Medicaid is often used by immigrants, including those who are lawfully present and those who are not.
Many people sign up for emergency Medicaid in their most desperate moments, said Hannah Katch, a previous adviser at CMS during the Biden administration.
“It’s unthinkable that CMS would violate the trust of Medicaid enrollees in this way,” Katch said. She said the personally identifiable information of enrollees has not been historically shared outside of the agency unless for law enforcement purposes to investigate waste, fraud or abuse of the program.
Trump officials last month demanded that the federal health agency’s staffers release personally identifiable information on millions of Medicaid enrollees from seven states that permit non-U.S. citizens to enroll in their full Medicaid programs.
The states launched these programs during the Biden administration and said they would not bill the federal government to cover the health care costs of those immigrants. All the states — California, New York, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado — have Democratic governors.
That data sharing with DHS officials prompted widespread backlash from lawmakers and governors. Twenty states have since sued over the move, alleging it violated federal health privacy laws.
CMS officials previously fought and failed to stop the data sharing that is now at the center of the lawsuits. On Monday, CMS officials were once again debating whether they should provide DHS access, citing concerns about the ongoing litigation.
In an email chain obtained by the AP called “Hold DHS Access — URGENT,” CMS chief legal officer Rujul H. Desai said they should first ask the Department of Justice to appeal to the White House directly for a “pause” on the information sharing. In a response the next day, HHS lawyer Lena Amanti Yueh said that the Justice Department was “comfortable with CMS proceeding with providing DHS access.”
Dozens of members of Congress, including Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, sent letters last month to DHS and HHS officials demanding that the information-sharing stop.
“The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American. This massive violation of our privacy laws must be halted immediately,” Schiff said in response to AP’s description of the new, expanded agreement. “It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to health care.”
The new agreement makes clear that DHS will use the data to identify, for deportation purposes, people who in the country illegally. But HHS officials have repeatedly maintained that it would be used primarily as a cost-saving measure, to investigate whether non-U.S. citizens were improperly accessing Medicaid benefits.
“HHS acted entirely within its legal authority – and in full compliance with all applicable laws – to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them,” Nixon said in a statement responding to the lawsuits last month.
King Donald? Supreme Court grants Trump power to repeal laws at his whim
Kimberly Wehle, opinion contributor – July 16, 2025
Opinion – King Donald? Supreme Court grants Trump power to repeal laws at his whim
“The executive has seized for itself the power to repeal federal law by way of mass terminations, in direct contravention of the Take Care Clause and our Constitution’s separation of powers.”
Read that again. These are the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s one-paragraph July 14 ruling, in which the majority basically held — without any justification or explanation whatsoever — that it’s fine that America has become a land of lawlessness with power consolidated in one person.
President Trump is the law now.
The case is McMahon v. New York, and it involves Trump’s stated plan to abolish the Department of Education by basically firing half of its workforce so that it cannot function. Unlike Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn DOGE experiment, this maneuver is not even thinly disguised by the pretense of government “efficiency.” Trump just wants the Department of Education to go.
The trouble is that, as a matter of the Constitution’s core separation of powers, Congress makes the laws. In 1979, Congress enacted the Department of Education Organization Act for purposes of “ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”
As Sotomayor explained in her dissent, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined, “only Congress has the power to abolish the department. The executive’s task, by contrast, is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”
By shutting down the Department of Education “by executive fiat,” Trump is blatantly intruding on the powers of the legislature to make the laws while ignoring the constitutional mandate, and his oath of office, that he duly execute those laws.
Trump’s plan ignores a bunch of other laws that the Department of Education is also responsible for executing, including laws governing federal grants for institutes of higher education; federal funding for kindergarten through high school (more than $100 billion during the 2020-2021 school year, or 11 percent of the total funding for public K-12 schools across the country); and laws banning discrimination in federally-funded schools on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex and disability.
Then there’s the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which, according to the department’s current website, “is a law that makes available a free appropriate education to eligible children with disabilities … and ensures special education and related services to those children, supports early services for infants and toddlers and their families, and awards competitive discretionary grants.” Seven million students across the country receive special education services supported by that law.
Another statute the department administers, the Elementary and Student Education Act, provides financial assistance programs to tens of millions of low-income students, too.
All of these laws are now being gutted by the stroke of Trump’s pen, as if he were a king.
There has been no public debate in Congress, no mark-ups of bills amending the law, no ability for voters to call representatives to lobby for or against proposals to amend the Department of Education and the statutes it administers. There has been no budget analyses, no media coverage of congressional horse-trading, no interviews of people from both parties on the steps of the Capitol, no hearing from public school officials or teachers or parents on whether this is a good idea.
Trump simply snatched the power to make and repeal major federal legislation and programs that affect millions of American children for himself.
Worse, the majority on the Supreme Court is letting him do it. Like Trump, it made its ruling on-the-fly and behind closed doors — without full briefing, oral argument or a written decision explaining the justices’ rationale for allowing this end run around Article I of the Constitution (which lodges the lawmaking power in Congress) and Article II (which mandates that the president take care that the laws are faithfully executed).
The majority’s silence left it to the dissenting justices once again to try and back-fill the majority’s reasoning in a dissenting opinion so that the public has some sort of record about what is possibly going on here.
Sotomayor explains that Trump, shortly after taking office, condemned the Department of Education as a “big con job” that he would “like to close immediately.” A week into her tenure, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon eliminated “nearly 50 percent of the Department’s workforce” as “the first step on the road to a total shutdown.” She closed entire offices — including the team responsible for administering bilingual education, every lawyer in the general counsel’s office responsible for K-12 education funding and IDEA grants, numerous regional offices that deal with civil rights laws and most of the office that certifies schools to receive federal student financial aid.
On March 20, Trump signed an executive order with a directive titled “Closing the Department of Education and Returning Authority to the States.” Twenty states and the District of Columbia sued, arguing that his actions violated the Take Care Clause and the Constitution’s separation of powers, incapacitating core components of the Department of Education on which the states rely. A similar lawsuit by school districts and unions followed. The cases were combined, and a district court issued an injunction preserving the status quo, keeping the department and the nation’s school system intact while the case was pending. An appeals court upheld that injunction.
Mind you, the district court issued its injunction after considering dozens of affidavits from Department of Education officials and recipients of federal funding describing how McMahon’s mass terminations have already affected the ability to pay teachers, purchase materials and equipment, and enroll students on federal financial aid — and how full implantation of Trump’s plan could be far worse. The government submitted no evidence in response.
Ignoring the record entirely, and on an emergency motion filed by the administration, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority simply overturned the injunction, effectively handing Trump a win — just weeks before the start of the new school year — without even bothering to actually grapple with the Constitution, the lower court’s findings or the dire impacts on millions of children and young adults that rely on the department’s programs in order to get an education.
This sounds like a dystopian science fiction storyline that a bunch of Hollywood writers and producers dreamed up. But it’s real. This is Trump’s — and the Supreme Court’s — America.
BREAKING: Historically corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi abuses her Justice Department power to sue Los Angeles for supposedly discriminating against ICE agents. And it gets so much worse…The MAGA-tainted DOJ is alleging that the city’s sanctuary city policies result in unfair treatment of federal immigration officers compared to other law enforcement agents. One struggles to imagine a whinier lawsuit. These fascists have no problem tearing apart families and destroying families but they fall to pieces if they’re treated with even an ounce of the disdain they so richly deserve. “Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles. Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level – it ends under President Trump,” Bondi stated. In truth, the “chaos” in Los Angeles was caused by Trump violently and illegally cracking down on protestors by sending in the National Guard and Marines. He wanted violence because it allowed him to project the “law and order” strongman persona that his gullible followers love. The lawsuit, yet another shameless waste of taxpayer money from this administration, alleges that the “sanctuary city laws and policies are designed to deliberately impede federal immigration officers’ ability to carry out their responsibilities in those jurisdictions.”“The Los Angeles Ordinance and other policies intentionally discriminate against the Federal Government by treating federal immigration authorities differently than other law enforcement agents through access restrictions both to property and to individual detainees, by prohibiting contractors and sub-contractors from providing information, and by disfavoring federal criminal laws that the City of Los Angeles has decided not to comply with,” it goes on.“ The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment—as the challenged law and policies do—thereby discriminating against the Federal Government. Accordingly, the law and policies challenged here are invalid and should be enjoined,” the suit adds. As usual, we see that Republicans only really believe in states’ rights (or in this case cities’ rights) when the polities in question adhere to extreme right-wing policies. Los Angeles should be free to govern itself as it sees fit. If Angelenos correctly see migrants as law-abiding, contributing members of their communities then Trump has no right to enforce his racist worldview on them.
June 28, 2025 – Bravo Taco! You are collapsing our economy one industry at a time. Racism has blinded most MAGAs to one universal truth: the backbone of our economy is immigrant labor.
Home Builder in Texas says ICE raids has ground construction to a halt, as the vast numbers of laborers are immigrants. Video:
John Hanno: Most Texan’s understand this, but they keep voting for the spineless republi-cons in congress, and for legislators in Texas who “ARE” the problem, and who couldn’t care less about a solution. Their elected leaders keep attacking and terrorizing the women and people of color who ARE part of the solution, and who are an asset to our nation. The question is, are their prejudices too ingrained for them to change their backwards ways? WTFU merica
The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell – June 28, 2025
The state is building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings in the Big Cypress National Preserve, which are ecologically sensitive wetlands.
John Hanno:
This is strictly MAGA political theater, and a gigantic boondoggle. The average cost to incarcerate a prisoner in the U.S. is probably about $75,000 per year. But these grifting morons in the trump nincompoop administration, will probably spend close to $200,000 to catch, detain and attempt to house each immigrant per year. The only ones that will benefit from rounding up hard working brown people, will be the connected trump billionaires who will get even richer, from the for profit, trump-prison-industrial-complex. And the spineless republi-con sycophants in congress, will take healthcare and food assistance away from the working poor and middle class, in order to fund this racist, fascist, ICE- Homeland Security Department nonsense. WTFU merica
While there are more than three months left in the fiscal year, one estimate has found that the agency is already $1 billion over budget, according to Axios. Legislators in both parties have raised concerns about the speed at which the agency is spending its funds, which may prompt President Donald Trump to seek additional funds from other agencies to support his deportation efforts.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has overspent its funds as it works to detain thousands of unauthorized immigrants each day. Estimates are that it is already $1 billion over budget. (AP)
The money crunch comes as the Trump White House is demanding that ICE agents detain 3,000 immigrants a day, levels the agency has yet to reach.
DHS has about 41,000 beds in its detention facilities, which are over capacity, and the department is looking for further detention space both in the U.S. and abroad.
Trump may declare a national emergency to send money to ICE from other parts of the government. In 2020, he used the measure to use $4 billion of the Pentagon’s money to fund his border wall.
A former budget official told Axios: “I have a feeling they’re going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money.”
University of Houston Law Center professor and former Defense Department attorney Chris Marisola told the outlet that “You could imagine a new emergency declaration that pertains to interior enforcement that would trigger the same kind of emergency personnel mobilization statutes.”
He added that “These statutory authorities authorizing the president to declare emergencies” unlock “a whole host of other authorities for these departments and agencies [that] are often written incredibly broadly and invest a lot of discretion in the president.”
The Trump White House has been trying to increase its power over the federal budget by overspending the budget of DHS, and the Office of Management and Budget has ceased sharing publicly how much money it’s spending across the government. The administration has also stopped agencies from spending funds appropriated by Congress for a number of programs.
DHS recently took the step of moving nearly $500 million from within its own funds to support its immigration clampdown. However, the agency has requested an extra $2 billion to meet its needs by the end of September.
The money crunch comes as the Trump White House is demanding that ICE agents detain 3,000 immigrants a day, (REUTERS)
Lawmakers have noted that DHS could run out of money as soon as July, which would violate the Antideficiency Act, which bans agencies from obligating or spending federal funds that have not been congressionally appropriated. Although no one has been previously charged under the Act, agency officials may face criminal charges or fines.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, told Axios that “President Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is critical to ensure we have the funding to secure our homeland for generations and deliver on the American people’s mandate for safety and security.”ADVERTISEMENTAdvertisement
The top Republican on the House DHS appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, told Axios that “we’re watching” the Senate budget negotiations.
“If there’s much of a hiccup in that, those concerns are all capital ‘C’ concerns,” he said.
Murphy added: “They are spending likely in the neighborhood of a billion dollars more at ICE than we authorized, and that’s patently illegal.”
“They cannot invent money. They cannot print money. They don’t have the money to spend that they’re spending,” he said.
Millions of people depend on the Great Lakes’ water supply. Trump decimated the lab protecting it.
Anna Clark, ProPublica – May 12, 2025
Lake Erie, as seen from Wayne County, Michigan. – Nick Hagen for ProPublica
This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive ProPublica’s stories in your inbox every week.
Just one year ago, JD Vance was a leading advocate of the Great Lakes and the efforts to restore the largest system of freshwater on the face of the planet.
As a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance called the lakes “an invaluable asset” for his home state. He supported more funding for a program that delivers “the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem” so that the Great Lakes would be protected “for generations to come.”
But times have changed.
This spring, Vance is vice president, and President Donald Trump’s administration is imposing deep cuts and new restrictions, upending the very restoration efforts that Vance once championed. With the peak summer season just around the corner, Great Lakes scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms, which can kill animals and sicken people.
Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.
In addition to a delayed launch, problems with personnel, supplies, vessel support and real-time data sharing have created doubts about the team’s ability to operate the buoys, said Gregory Dick, director of the NOAA cooperative institute at the University of Michigan that partners with the lab. Both the lab and institute operate out of a building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was custom built as NOAA’s hub in the Great Lakes region, and both provide staff to the algal blooms team.
“This has massive impacts on coastal communities,” Dick said.
Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research, which works side by side with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, says that cuts to the lab will have a massive impact on coastal communities. – Nick Hagen for ProPublicaMore
Multiple people who have worked with the lab also told ProPublica that there are serious gaps in this year’s monitoring of algal blooms, which are often caused by excess nutrient runoff from farms. Data generated by the lab’s boats and buoys, and publicly shared, could be limited or interrupted, they said.
That data has helped to successfully avoid a repeat of a 2014 crisis in Toledo, Ohio, when nearly half a million people were warned to not drink the water or even touch it.
If the streams of information are cut off, “stakeholders will be very unhappy,” said Bret Collier, a branch chief at the lab who oversaw the federal scientists that run the harmful algal bloom program for the Great Lakes. He was fired in the purge of federal probationary workers in February.
The lab has lost about 35% of its 52-member workforce since February, according to the president of the lab’s union, and it was not allowed to fill several open positions. The White House released preliminary budget recommendations last week that would make significant cuts to NOAA. The budget didn’t provide details, but indicated the termination of “a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy” of ending “‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”
An earlier document obtained by ProPublica and reported widely proposed a 74% funding cut to NOAA’s research office, home of the Great Lakes lab.
Vance’s office didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about how federal cuts have affected Great Lakes research. The White House also didn’t respond to messages.
Water samples from bodies of water in the Great Lakes region. – Nick Hagen for ProPublica
In a statement to ProPublica, staffers from Toledo’s water system credited the Great Lakes lab and NOAA for alerting it to potential blooms near its intake days ahead of time. This has saved the system significant costs, they said, and helped it avoid feeding excess chemicals into the water.
“The likelihood of another 2014 ‘don’t drink the water’ advisory has been minimized to almost nothing by additional vigilance” from both the lab and local officials, they said.
Remaining staff have had to contend with not only a lack of capacity but also tight limits on spending and travel.
Several people who have worked in or with the lab said that the staff was hampered by strict credit card limits imposed on government employees as part of the effort to reduce spending by the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been spearheaded by presidential adviser Elon Musk.
“The basic scientific supplies that we use to provide the local communities with information on algal bloom toxicity — our purchasing of them is being restricted based on the limitations currently being put in by the administration,” Collier said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s custom-built hub for the Great Lakes region in Ann Arbor, Michigan. – Nick Hagen for ProPublica
NOAA and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the agency, didn’t respond to messages from ProPublica. Neither did a DOGE official. Eight U.S. senators, including the minority leader, sent a letter in March to a top NOAA leader inquiring about many of the changes, but they never received a response.
A number of the staffing losses at the Great Lakes lab came when employees accepted offers of early retirement or voluntary separation; others were fired probationary workers targeted by DOGE across the government. That includes Collier, who had 24 years of professional experience, largely as a research professor, before he was hired last year into a position that, according to the lab’s former director, had been difficult to fill.
A scientist specializing in the toxic algal blooms was also fired. She worked on the team for 14 years through the cooperative institute before accepting a federal position last year, which made her probationary, too.
A computer scientist who got real-time data onto the lab’s website — and the only person who knew how to push out the weekly sampling data on harmful algal blooms — was also fired. She was probationary because she too was hired for a federal position after working with the institute.
And because of a planned retirement, no one holds the permanent position of lab director, though there is an acting director. The lab isn’t allowed to fill any positions due to a federal hiring freeze.
At the same time, expected funds for the lab’s cooperative institute are delayed, which means, Dick said, it may soon lay off staff, including people on the algal blooms team.
In March, Cleveland’s water commissioner wrote a letter calling for continued support for the Great Lakes lab and other NOAA-funded operations in the region, saying that access to real-time forecasts for Lake Erie are “critically important in making water treatment decisions” for more than 1.3 million citizens.
In 2006, there was a major outbreak of hypoxia, an issue worsened by algal blooms where oxygen-depleted water can become corrosive, discolored and full of excess manganese, which is a neurotoxin at high levels. Cleveland Water collaborated with the lab on developing a “groundbreaking” hypoxia forecast model, said Scott Moegling, who worked for both the Cleveland utility and Ohio’s drinking water regulatory agency.
“I knew which plants were going to get hit,” Moegling said. “I knew about when, and I knew what the treatment we would need would be, and we could staff accordingly.”
The American Meteorological Society, in partnership with the National Weather Association, spotlighted this warning system in its statement in support of NOAA research, saying that it helps “keep drinking water potable in the Great Lakes region.”
Collier, the former branch chief, said that quality data may be lacking this year, not just for drinking water suppliers, but also the U.S. Coast Guard, fisheries, shipping companies, recreational businesses and shoreline communities that rely on it to navigate risk. In response to a recent survey of stakeholders, the president of a trade organization serving Great Lakes cargo vessels said that access to NOAA’s real-time data “is critically important to the commercial shipping fleet when making navigation decisions.”
Because federal law requires NOAA to monitor harmful algal blooms, the cuts may run against legal obligations, several current and former workers told ProPublica. The blooms program was “federally mandated to be active every single day, without exception,” Collier said.
Harmful algal bloom on Lake Erie, observed during weekly sampling in 2022. – The Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research at the University of MichiganA beaker holding a water sample taken from Lake Erie during a peak harmful algal bloom, shown at its natural concentration in 2017. – The Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research at the University of MichiganMore
The 2024 bloom in Lake Erie was the earliest on record. At its peak, it covered 550 square miles. Warming temperatures worsen the size and frequency of algal blooms. While the field season was historically only about 90 days, Collier said, last year the team was deployed for 211 days.
As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is typically first to show signs of problems. But it’s also an emblem of environmental stewardship, thanks to its striking recovery from unchecked industrial pollution. The lake was once popularly declared “dead.” A highly publicized fire inflamed a river that feeds into it. Even Dr. Seuss knocked it in the 1971 version of “The Lorax.” The book described fish leaving a polluted pond “in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”
“I should no longer be saying bad things about a body of water that is now, due to great civic and scientific effort, the happy home of smiling fish,” Geisel wrote to them.
Nicole Rice was recently fired from her position at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory after 10 years with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A promotion put her on probationary status. She’s worried that federal cuts are placing the Great Lakes system at risk. – Nick Hagen for ProPublicaMore
Project 2025, the plan produced by the Heritage Foundation for Trump’s second term, recommended that the president consider whether NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”
NOAA is “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” the plan said, and this industry’s mission “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”
“That is not to say NOAA is useless,” it added, “but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”
When asked at his confirmation hearing in January if he agreed with Project 2025’s recommendation of dismantling NOAA, Howard Lutnick, head of the commerce department, said no.
One month later, the Great Lakes lab’s probationary staff got termination notices. That includes Nicole Rice, who spent a decade with NOAA. A promotion made her communications job vulnerable to the widespread firings of federal probationary workers.
In recent testimony to a Michigan Senate committee, Rice expressed deep concern about the future of the Great Lakes.
“It has taken over a century of bipartisan cooperation, investment and science to bring the Great Lakes back from the brink of ecological collapse,” Rice said. “But these reckless cuts could undo the progress in just a few short years, endangering the largest surface freshwater system in the world.”
The New Deal Is a Stinging Rebuke to Trump and Trumpism
Jamelle Bouie – April 30, 2025
Credit…Nathan Howard/Reuters
There is no question that Donald Trump’s ambition in the first 100 days of his return to the Oval Office was to set a new standard for presidential accomplishment. To rival, even surpass, the scope of Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts nearly a century ago, when he moved so quickly — and so decisively — that he established the first 100 days as a yardstick for executive action.
But as consequential as they have been, and as exhausting as they’ve felt to many Americans, these first months of Trump’s second term fall far short of what Roosevelt accomplished. Yes, Trump has wreaked havoc throughout the federal government and destroyed our relationships abroad, but his main goal — the total subordination of American democracy to his will — remains unfulfilled. You could even say it is slipping away, as he sabotages his administration with a ruinous trade war, deals with the stiff opposition of a large part of civil society and plummets in his standing with most Americans.
If measured by his ultimate aims, Trump’s first 100 days are a failure. To understand why he failed, we must do a bit of compare-and-contrast. First, let’s look at the details of Trump’s opening gambit. And second, let’s measure his efforts against the man who set the terms in the first place: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To do so is to see that the first 100 days of Trump’s second term aren’t what we think they are. More important, it is to see that the ends of a political project cannot be separated from the means that are used to bring it into this world.
Trump began his second term with a shock-and-awe campaign of executive actions. He, or rather the people around him, devised more than 100 executive orders, all part of a program to repeal the better part of the 20th century — from the New Deal onward — as well as fundamentally transform the relationship between the federal government and the American people.
His ultimate aim is to turn a constitutional republic centered on limited government and the rule of law into a personalist autocracy centered on the rule of one man, Donald J. Trump, and his unlimited authority. Trump’s vision for the United States, put differently, has more in common with foreign dictatorships than it does with almost anything you might find in America’s tradition of republican self-government.
To that end, the president’s executive orders are meant to act as royal decrees — demands that the country bend to his will. In one, among the more than four dozen issued in his first weeks in office, Trump purports to purge the nation’s primary and secondary schools of supposed “radical indoctrination” and promote a program of “patriotic education” instead. In another, signed in the flurry of executive activity that marked his first afternoon back in the Oval Office, Trump asserts the power to define “biological” sex and “gender identity” themselves, in an attempt to end official recognition of trans and other gender nonconforming people.
In Trump’s America, diversity, equity and inclusion programs aren’t just frowned upon; they’re grounds for purges in the public sector and investigations in the private sector. Scientific and medical research must align with his ideological agenda; anything that doesn’t — no matter how promising or useful — is on the chopping block. Any institutions that assert independent authority, like law firms and universities, must be brought to heel with the force of the state itself. Everything in American society must align with the president’s agenda. Those who disagree might find themselves at the mercy of his Department of Justice or worse, his deportation forces.
Trump claims sovereign authority. He claims the right to dismantle entire federal agencies, regardless of the law. He claims the right to spend taxpayer dollars as he sees fit, regardless of what Congress has appropriated. He even claims the right to banish American citizens from the country and send them to rot in a foreign prison.
Trump has deployed autocratic means toward authoritarian ends. And the results, while sweeping, rest on a shaky foundation of unlawful actions and potentially illegal executive actions.
Now, let’s consider Roosevelt.
It’s from Roosevelt, of course, that we get the idea that the 100th day is a milestone worth marking.
Roosevelt took office at a time of deprivation and desperation. The Great Depression had reached its depths during the winter of his inauguration in March 1933. Total estimated national income had dropped by half, and the financial economy had all but shut down, with banks closed and markets frozen. About one-quarter of the nation’s work force — or close to 15 million people — was out of work. Countless businesses had failed. What little relief was available, from either public or private sources, was painfully inadequate.
“Now is the winter of our discontent the chilliest,” Merle Thorpe, the editor of Nation’s Business — then the national magazine of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — wrote in an editorial that captured the mood of the country on the eve of Roosevelt’s inauguration. “Fear, bordering on panic, loss of faith in everything, our fellow-man, our institutions, private and government. Worst of all, no faith in ourselves, or the future. Almost everyone ready to scuttle the ship, and not even ‘women and children first.’”
It was this pall of despair that led Roosevelt to tell the nation in his Inaugural Address that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Despite the real calls for someone to seize dictatorial power in the face of crisis, Roosevelt’s goal — more, possibly, than anything else — was to rescue and rejuvenate American democracy: to rebuild it as a force that could tame the destructive force of unregulated capitalism.
As such, the new president insisted, the country “must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline.” His means would fit his ends. He would use democracy to save democracy. He would go to the people’s representatives with an ambitious plan of action. “These measures,” he said, “or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.”
What followed was a blitz of action meant to ameliorate the worst of the crisis. “On his very first night in office,” the historian William E. Leuchtenburg (who died three months ago) recounted in his seminal volume, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940,” Roosevelt “directed secretary of the Treasury William Woodin to draft an emergency banking bill, and gave him less than five days to get it ready.”
Five days later, on March 9, 1933, Congress convened a special session during which it approved the president’s banking bill with by acclamation in the House and a nearly unanimous vote in the Senate. Soon after, Roosevelt urged the legislature to pass an unemployment relief measure. By the end of the month, on March 31, Congress had created the Civilian Conservation Corps.
This was just the beginning of a burst of legislative and executive activity. On May 12 alone, Roosevelt signed the Federal Emergency Relief Act — establishing the precursor to the Works Progress Administration — the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act. He signed the bill creating the Tennessee Valley Authority less than a week later, on May 18, and the Securities Act regulating the offer and sale of securities on May 27. On June 16, Roosevelt signed Glass-Steagall, a law regulating the banking system, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, an omnibus business and labor relations bill with a public works component. With that, and 100 days after it began, Congress went out of session.
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The legislature, Leuchtenburg wrote,
had written into the laws of the land the most extraordinary series of reforms in the nation’s history. It had committed the country to an unprecedented program of government-industry cooperation; promised to distribute stupendous sums to millions of staple farmers; accepted responsibility for the welfare of millions of unemployed; agreed to engage in far-reaching experimentation in regional planning; pledged billions of dollars to save homes and farms from foreclosure; undertaken huge public works spending; guaranteed the small bank deposits of the country; and had, for the first time, established federal regulation of Wall Street.
And Roosevelt, Leuchtenburg continued, “had directed the entire operation like a seasoned field general.” The president even coined the “hundred days” phrasing, using it in a July 24, 1933, fireside chat on his recovery program, describing it as a period “devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”
The frantic movement of Roosevelt’s first months set a high standard for all future presidents; all fell short. “The first 100 days make him look like a minor league statesman,” said one journalist of Roosevelt’s successor Harry S. Truman. The Times described the first 100 days of the Eisenhower administration as a “slow start.” And after John F. Kennedy’s first 100 days yielded few significant accomplishments, the young president let the occasion pass without remark.
There is much to be said about why Roosevelt was able to do so much in such a short window of time. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the crisis of the Depression. “The country was in such a state of confused desperation that it would have followed almost any leader anywhere he chose to go,” observed the renowned columnist and public intellectual Walter Lippmann. It also helped that there was no meaningful political opposition to either Roosevelt or the Democratic Party — the president took power with overwhelming majorities in the House and the Senate. The Great Depression had made the Republicans a rump party, unable to mount an effective opposition to the early stages of the New Deal.
This note on Congress is key. Beyond the particular context of Roosevelt’s moment, both the expectation and the myth of Roosevelt’s 100 days miss the extent to which it was a legislative accomplishment as much as an executive one. Roosevelt did not transform the United States with a series of executive orders; he did so with a series of laws.
Roosevelt was chief legislator as much as he was chief executive. “He wrote letters to committee chairmen or members of Congress to urge passage of his proposals, summoned the congressional leadership to White House conferences on legislation … and appeared in person before Congress,” Leuchtenburg wrote in an essay arguing that Roosevelt was “the first modern president”:
He made even the hitherto mundane business of bill signing an occasion for political theater; it was he who initiated the custom of giving a presidential pen to a congressional sponsor of legislation as a memento.
Or as the journalist Raymond Clapper wrote of Roosevelt at the end of his first term: “It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the president, although not a member of Congress, has become almost the equivalent of the prime minister of the British system, because he’s both executive and the guiding hand of the legislative branch.”
Laws are never fixed in place. But neither are they easily moved. It’s for this reason that any president who hopes to make a lasting mark on the United States must eventually turn to legislation. It is in lawmaking that presidents secure their legacy for the long haul.
This brings us back to Trump, whose desire to be a strongman has led him to rule like a strongman under the belief that he can impose an authoritarian system on the United States through sheer force of will.
His White House doesn’t just rely on executive orders; it revolves around them. They are the primary means through which the administration takes action (he has signed only five bills into law), under a radical assertion of executive power: the unitary executive taken to its most extreme form. And for Trump himself, they seem to define his vision of the presidency. He holds his ceremonies — always televised, of course — where subordinates present his orders as he gushes over them.
But while we have no choice but to recognize the significance of the president’s use of executive power, we also can’t believe the hype. Just because Trump desires to transform the American system of government doesn’t mean that he will. Autocratic intent does not translate automatically into autocratic success.
Remember, an executive order isn’t law. It is, as Philip J. Cooper explained in “By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action,” a directive “issued by the president to officers of the executive branch, requiring them to take an action, stop a certain type of activity, alter policy, change management practices, or accept a delegation of authority under which they will henceforth be responsible for the implementation of law.” When devised carefully and within the scope of the president’s lawful authority, an executive order can have the force of law (provided the underlying statute was passed within the constitutional authority of Congress), but it does not carry any inherent authority. An executive order is not law simply because the president says it is.
Even though Trump seems to think he is issuing decrees, the truth is that his directives are provisional and subject to the judgment of the courts as well as future administrations. And if there is a major story to tell about Trump’s second term so far, it is the extent to which many of the president’s most sweeping executive actions have been tied up in the federal judiciary. The White House, while loath to admit it, has even had to back down in the face of hostile rulings.
The president might want to be a king, but despite the best efforts of his allies on the Supreme Court, the American system is not one of executive supremacy. Congress has all the power it needs to reverse the president’s orders and thwart his ambitions. Yes, the national legislature is held by the president’s party right now. But that won’t be a permanent state of affairs, especially given the president’s unpopularity.
MAGA propaganda notwithstanding, Trump is not some grand impresario skillfully playing American politics to his precise tune. He may want to bend the nation to his will, but he does not have the capacity to do the kind of work that would make this possible, as well as permanent — or as close to permanent as lawmaking allows. If Roosevelt’s legislative skill was a demonstration of his strength, then Trump’s reliance on executive orders is a sign of his weakness.
None of this is to discount the real damage that he has inflicted on the country. It is precisely because Republicans in Congress have abdicated their duty to the Constitution that Trump has the capacity to act in catastrophically disastrous ways.
But the overarching project of the second Trump administration — to put the United States on the path toward a consolidated authoritarian state — has stalled out. And it has done so because Trump lacks what Roosevelt had in spades: a commitment to governance and a deep understanding of the system in which he operated.
Roosevelt could orchestrate the transformative program of his 100 days because he tied his plan to American government as it existed, even as he worked to remake it. Trump has pursued his by treating the American government as he wants it to be. It is very difficult to close the gap between those two things, and it will become all the more difficult as the bottom falls out of Trump’s standing with the public.
Do not take this as succor. Do not think it means that the United States is in the clear. American democracy is still as fragile and as vulnerable as it has ever been, and Trump is still motivated to make his vision a reality. He may even lash out as it becomes clear that he has lost whatever initiative he had to begin with. This makes his first 100 days less a triumph for him than a warning to the rest of us. The unthinkable, an American dictatorship, is possible.
But Trump may not have the skills to effect the permanent transformation of his despotic dreams. Despite the chaos of the moment, it is possible that freedom-loving Americans have gotten the luck of the draw. Our most serious would-be tyrant is also among our least capable presidents, and he has surrounded himself with people as fundamentally flawed as he is.
On Inauguration Day, Donald Trump seemed to be on top of the world. One hundred days later, he’s all but a lame duck. He can rage and he can bluster — and he will do a lot more damage — but the fact of the matter is that he can be beaten. Now the task is to deliver him his defeat.
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