The Trump administration tore down USAID before figuring out what it actually did.
Because USAID was shuttered so quickly and with little warning, lots of people traveled for desperate medical care or food, just to find the USAID location shutdown. Lots of people died.
The State Department has not released the data needed to see how many people died.
Marco Rubio used to say if you want to know how important USAID is, just travel to Africa and see the many lives of children saved at relative low cost by the American taxpayer. Such people are less likely to be radicalized or become anti-American. Yet, Rubio didn’t, or couldn’t, save USAID under the Trump administration.
DOGE bros were uninformed and just smacked the table and yelled at people. Some of them thought USAID mostly did abortions. USAID doesn’t do abortions. DOGE tore down USAID because Elon Musk demanded it.
When it comes to understanding government policy, Elon Musk is incompetent and his actions have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
“Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion in January, accusing the agencies of failing to prevent a leak of the president’s tax information during his first term.
The DOJ is now holding internal discussions about potentially settling the case
…
This is a novel case given that Trump oversees the IRS, and two parties in a lawsuit must be on opposite sides.”
“Americans appear to be leaving the U.S. at once-in-a-century levels, fleeing divisive politics and a cost of living crisis.
…
Nearly all of the European Union’s 27 member states have seen record levels of Americans arriving to live and work there in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis found.
Outside of Europe, Mexico is another popular destination.”
Trump and his supporters ludicrously exaggerated the extent that Biden or Democrats were committing lawfare, then got into office and are repeatedly in a black and white manner abusing the power of justice to target political opponents on charges that don’t make sense to waste police, Justice Department, and lawyer resources on.
Officials and lawyers are acting in ways that are illegal, and should be appropriately prosecuted and punished for these blatant abuses of power. One reason many seasoned lawyers have quit rather than fulfill Trump’s requests to prosecute political opponents is because they fear just and appropriate disbarment.
“Prices rose 3.8% in April compared to a year earlier, marking an increase from a year-over-year inflation rate of 3.3% in the prior month. Annual inflation jumped to its highest level in three years, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data showed.
As recently as February, inflation stood at 2.4%, clocking in just a tick above the Federal Reserve’s target level of 2%.
The jump in prices last month owed in large part to a sharp rise in costs for products impacted by a global oil shock. Gasoline prices were 5% higher in April than March, the BLS report said. Airline fares climbed 2.8% from the previous month.”
Russia had a ship carrying two nuclear reactors likely for North Korea’s nuclear submarines. It was sunk by some sort of explosion. No one is admitting what happened.
We’ve got to be able to have fair, reasonable ways to tax the super wealthy without demonizing them.
The wealthy pay a lot, however, due to how incredibly much they have, and inequality, they still don’t pay their fair share. The goal of taxation is to pay for government in the least harmful way possible, not to liquidate the rich. Fair taxation and reasonable welfare policy is good. Class warfare is evil. A society that taxes in order to end billionaires, or that uses rhetoric that endangers the wealthy, will be a violent and repressive society–either because the masses will turn authoritarian and violent, or because the wealthy will out of fear.