Attempting to navigate
The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to repatriate the U.S. Agency for International Development’s overseas workforce has thrust the agency’s global staff into chaos and despair, as workers scramble to uproot their lives and brace for what they fear will be a shutdown of all American aid missions in 30 days.
In interviews, USAID staffers said Tuesday’s recall order hassent them racing to make temporary housing arrangements back in the United States, identify new day cares or schools for their children, and plan for a future in which, as many now believe is inevitable, they are left unemployed.
These employees, some assigned to dangerous “hardship” posts, are attempting to navigate that process with little information from the Trump administration and while many are locked out of all agency computer systems.
And why? Because of anonymous conspiracists on TwitX and Musk’s grotesque credulity toward them.
“We’ve seen this sort of thing happen in evacuations of war zones,” one official said. “I just can’t believe we’re doing it for the flippant kind of political pageantry that this administration seems to be doing it for.”
And based on the beyond-flippant worthlessness of anonymous gossips on social media.
Another official said the most concerning thing wasn’t the personal toll of navigating housing or schools.
“The biggest thing that keeps me up at night is that I see USAID’s destruction as a test case — a practice run — in how far the administration can bend or break the law to get what they want,” the official said. “We are the canary in the coal mine.”
Yeeah.
Unfortunately, the key is the number of Republicans who can go beyond the fact that a) Trump and Musk are gutting programs they’d like to see gutted, and b) that Trump is “their guy”, in order to realize that he is breaking the law, and that he is interfering with and infringing on the prerogatives of the Legislative Branch. With USAID they might be able to shrug off opposition as Democratic partisanship, laughing at all the liberal tears and anger. In actuality of course, Trump is destroying the basic rules of how the United States Government is supposed to work. The issue shouldn’t be whether or not USAID is a program they like, but the fact that it was established by Congress. Every member of Congress should be fighting to protect the job they were elected to do rather than surrender their Constitutionally mandated powers to anyone. If Republicans would have objected to Obama doing this, than they should oppose Trump’s attempt as vigourously. That shouldn’t be an R vs D, or even a liberal vs conservative thing. It should be an American thing, and I can see that from next door in Canada. Our proximity, combined with Trump’s ongoing threats to our economy and our sovereignty means that we have skin in the game. But Republicans are sitting in the seats of the very House and Senate whose power he is taking to himself, so they’ve got even more at stake. They’re suffering from the delusion that he’s on their side (or that they are on his), when he’s only out for himself. Trump is not their friend; they should not be his. Trump only needs Congressional Republicans for as long as they are useful and compliant. That means that none of them are safe, and all of them are expendable, as is American democracy itself. In fact, democracy is the target. That Republicans can’t see this, or are fine with this erosion of the rule of law and the rules of government is truly frightening. It’s like they relish the idea of being a bunch of rubber-stamping cheerleaders, from whom Trump has removed power and responsibility.
Are the Republicans willing to sacrifice their Republic? How many are willing to defy Team Trump in order to defend the Constitution? How many are prepared, so early in this Administration, to risk their political careers to save their country? How many even realize or suspect that these are the stakes? Too damn few. Too many are having so much fun riding the Trump steamroller that they don’t stop to think they might go under it in the round of Trump’s contempt of Congress. By then it will be too late.
Should “Trump is not their friend; he should not be theirs” be “Trump is not their friend; they should not be his”?
Yes, thank you.
The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on.
If you really want to depress yourself, here is a link to Forbes News YouTube on Democratic congress members being prevented from entering the Department of Education:
https://youtu.be/u4viueoaEHg?si=m-tq9WEFttfvnaN4
It is the comments more than Youtube itself that are depressing.
Well the Nazi fucksticks came out of the woodwork last time… I imagine it’s in overdrive now.
It seems Trump is now saying that white South Africans can come here as refugees, and they will be welcomed.
Yeah, and this is why whenever someone with their head supposedly on straight suggests the Republicans are creating some kind of multi-ethnic working class coalition realignment I start looking at them funny. Oh sure, that may have been a way to get him elected, but rich assholes and racist whites are already the primary beneficiaries while many of his voters (that held their nose, supposedly) are being directly targeted.