Musk claimed that if USAID activities could even send him flimsy evidence that they were doing something useful, DOGE wouldn’t cut it. But Musk’s and Trump’s DOGE cut USAID programs that in total saved half a million to one million preventable deaths a year.
The head of USAID during W Bush’s presidency says that the idea that USAID is a Marxist organization is ridiculous. He said that while he was head, he moved the organization to the right and focused on free market reforms, and when Obama came in, he moved it to the left; the career people do what the people at the top tell them to do. Trump just came in and destroyed it.
“The Trump administration signaled a plan Friday to revoke a two-year-old tax rule designed to crack down on an arcane but highly lucrative tax avoidance tactic used by some of the largest and most complicated businesses.
If enacted, the Trump administration’s proposal would mean that large business partnerships no longer need to tell the IRS when they shift assets from one corporate entity to another. Those transactions, called “basis shifting,” have allowed businesses to dodge tens of billions of dollars in taxes, the Treasury Department alleged in the past, by illegally depreciating the same asset over and over again.
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the IRS workforce has shrunk drastically under Trump. In the first months of his term, more than a quarter of the agency took buyout offers or otherwise left their jobs.”
Trump’s special military operation in Iran is failing. There’s no sign that the regime will be overthrown. The US and Israel can destroy a lot of equipment, but Iran still has a ground army and still has forces to keep control of the country. Without a massive ground invasion, there’s no sign that Trump’s special military operation will produce significant political results.
Israel previously destroyed Iranian mixers needed to make medium range ballistic missiles. This was supposed to keep production offline for at least a year, but the Chinese gave Iran the equipment needed to rebuild the program. Iran decided to build way more of these missiles than before. These are a huge threat to Israel.
The problem wasn’t that Trump didn’t evacuate Americans from the area in advance, that would cause a panic and give a tell that we were attacking. The problem is that we didn’t have a plan to get them out at all! That makes it seem like the administration did not expect Iran’s reaction even though a large and deadly reaction should be expected when we are trying to eliminate their regime.
Israel sees Iran as an existential threat and is happy to see Iran greatly weakened so Israel can have some temporary breathing room.
This doesn’t match American interests. Iran is not the same level of threat to the United States. Using blood, treasure, and munitions to temporarily weaken Iran is a large net bad for the US. This war is only worth it for the US if Iran gets a friendlier regime or has a long term change in behavior.
W Bush focusing on fighting insurgencies while China was rising, led to the US not having the military industrial base and stockpiles of certain munitions. If the US uses too many munitions fighting Iran, it will be greatly weakened for a fight against China. This also weakens US deterrence against China.
However, if Iran is in too much chaos to pump oil, or if it is friendly enough with the US that in the event of a China-US war it would not sell oil to China, that would be a huge advantage in starving China of oil in the event of a war.