100 Days
Summaries of the first 100 days of the Trump administration are everywhere. Most aren’t holding back and while it’s crazy and infuriating and so worrisome to see all of his chaos and his alarming acts of executive overreach listed in print, I’m also grateful to see it all outlined. I feel vindicated because while I have been worried and grieving and standing up and standing in, my concerns have been dismissed and minimized way too often.
But he told us his plans before he was elected, so the chaos and cruelty are not surprising. They *are* heartbreaking, though.
I posted here (in November) that I was done posting about politics. But I was wrong. I said that from a place of such overwhelm and exhaustion. And while the overwhelm and exhaustion have not abated much, I realize that I must not be silent in the face of what’s going on.
One of my favorite quotes is from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” I will not choose the side of the oppressor with silence or neutrality!
God doesn’t call us to love justice; He calls us to DO JUSTICE (Micah 6:8). And that means speaking up, exposing lies, fighting for justice for all, and being an ally to those targeted by the injustices and cruelties perpetuated or even exacerbated by the current administration.
For the record, take a look at the following from a wide variety of credible* sources:
The president wants unchecked power
For Mr Trump the executive branch is an extension of his own person. The president has declared that he and the attorney-general would “provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch”. That ambition, and resistance to it, will roil American politics until the midterm elections in 2026. . . . .Mr Trump wants to dismantle the federal bureaucracy
By mauling federal departments and removing regulations, Mr Trump hopes to loosen the government’s grip on most businesses (while tightening it on some that incur his displeasure). The aim is to encourage economic growth. Critics worry he will merely jeopardise citizens’ safety.
I especially appreciate the “Ask The Economist” section at the end of this article!
From the venerable Dan Rather: “By any reasonable analysis, Trump’s first 100 days have been a disaster, especially on the issues that supposedly got him elected.
Trump and Co. will twist themselves into knots telling you otherwise, but don’t be fooled by the spin. Trump 2.0 isn’t making America, or any place else, great again.”
A summary of the last 100 days from Time:
If Trump is making cosmetic changes to the White House, his effect on the presidency goes much deeper. The first 100 days of his second term have been among the most destabilizing in American history, a blitz of power grabs, strategic shifts, and direct attacks that have left opponents, global counterparts, and even many supporters stunned. Trump has launched a battery of orders and memoranda that have hobbled entire government agencies and departments. He has threatened to take Greenland by force, seize control of the Panama Canal, and annex Canada. Weaponizing his control of the Justice Department, he has ordered investigations of political enemies. He has gutted much of the civil service, removing more than a hundred thousand federal workers. He has gone to war with institutions across American life: universities, media outlets, law firms, museums. He pardoned or gave a commutation to every single defendant charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attacks, including those convicted of violent acts and seditious conspiracy. Seeking to remake the global economy, he triggered a trade war by unleashing a sweeping array of tariffs that sent markets plummeting. Embarking on his promised program of mass deportation, he has mobilized agencies across government, from the IRS to the Postal Service, as part of the effort to find, detain, and expel immigrants. He has shipped some of them to foreign countries without due process, citing a wartime provision from the 18th century. His Administration has snatched foreign students off the streets and stripped their visas for engaging in speech he dislikes. He has threatened to send Americans to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Says one senior Administration official: “Our success depends on his ability to shock you.”
Similar, from The Washington Post and from The Wall Street Journal
From The New York Times, with a similar evaluation from NPR
The BBC published an article fact-checking Trump’s speech at his recent Michigan rally (fact-checking is always necessary but is specifically so with one whose linga franca is lies).
This also happened—
It’s rarely comforting to appear on a government “list,” even (or perhaps especially) when compiled in the name of public safety.
It was alarming in the 1940s, when the U.S. government collected the names of Japanese Americans for internment. Likewise in the 1950s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee catalogued communists. And it’s just as troubling now, as the Trump administration assembles registries of Jewish academics and Americans with developmental disabilities.
Yes, these are real things that happened this past week, the latest examples of the White House’s abuse of confidential data.
Last week, faculty and staff at Barnard College received unsolicited texts asking them whether they were Jewish. Employees were stunned by the messages, which many initially dismissed as spam.
Turns out the messages came from the Trump administration. Barnard, which is affiliated with Columbia University, had agreed to share faculty members’ private contact info to aid in President Donald Trump’s pseudo-crusade against antisemitism.
Ah, yes, a far-right president asking Jews to register as Jewish, in the name of protecting the Jews, after he has repeatedly accused Jews of being “disloyal.” What could go wrong?
The same day, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a “disease registry” of people with autism, to be compiled from confidential private and government health records, apparently without its subjects’ awareness or consent. This is part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vendetta against vaccines, which he has said cause autism despite abundant research concluding otherwise.
This, too, is disturbing given authoritarian governments’ history of compiling lists of citizens branded mentally or physically deficient. If that historical analogue seems excessive, note that Bhattacharya’s announcement came just a week after Kennedy delivered inflammatory remarks lamenting that kids with autism will never lead productive lives. They “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job,” he said, adding they’ll never play baseball or go on a date, either.
NOTE: *I do not consider cable news sources as credible news. I try to get my news directly from the source when I can. And when I can’t, I trust mostly legacy media—ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, AP and the others listed above and listed here. I do not and will never rely on Newsmax, Fox, or News Nation, CNN, MSNBC, and others because as cable news sources, they are all biased (straight up and/or by omission), questionable, and unreliable sources. They are not fact-checked, they lack transparency, and most of all: they use loaded language to elicit outrage or to influence an audience with appeals to emotion or stereotypes. These news outlets serve to further divide and polarize us.
On that note, this below from Ted Koppel describes the problem:
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.