Donald Trump and maga Republicans shoving Project 2025 down American's throats and the side effects are nauseating

Donald Trump  lies about virtually everything and he lied to voters about the deeply unpopular Project 2025, but Americans are now living under the horror of this plan in real time. 🤥 The ramming of this horrible plan down our American throats is disgusting 🤢and unlawful, being accomplished with unauthorized executive orders. 

Echo essay published by Heather Cox Richardson in Letters from an American

On July 2, 2024, just about a year ago, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts told the listeners of Steve Bannon’s War Room webcast: “[W]e are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back.” Roberts pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States the day before giving the president absolute immunity for committing crimes while engaging in official acts.

“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it's vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts said, adding that the nation needs a strong leader because “the left has taken over our institutions.” “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts was the man who organized Project 2025, the blueprint for a new kind of government dictated by a right-wing strongman. Creating that new government would require a president willing to act illegally, stripping the secular language of civil rights from public life, packing the government with loyalists, ending the social safety net, killing business regulations, and purging American institutions of all but right-wing ideologues.

When Americans learned about Project 2025, they hated it. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that only 4% of Americans saw the project favorably. Even among Republicans, that number climbed only to 7%. For those identifying as MAGA Republicans, the number rose to just 9%.

So Trump and his campaign advisors denied that he had anything to do with the plan. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on social media in July. “I have no idea who is behind it.”

And yet six months into the second Trump administration, on the sixtieth anniversary of the law that symbolized the modern American state by establishing Medicare and Medicaid, it’s clear we are indeed in a revolution designed to destroy the government we have known in favor of the radical right-wing government envisioned by those who wrote Project 2025.

From the beginning, the administration declared war on the words that protected equal rights for all Americans, fired women and racial minorities from leadership positions, and attacked transgender Americans. It worked to replace civil servants with loyalists who embraced the tenets of Project 2025, putting people like former Fox News host Pete Hegseth at the head of government agencies. Yesterday Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that in a break with past practices, Hegseth, now secretary of defense, is requiring nominees for four-star general positions in the U.S. military to meet personally with Trump.

It worked to dismantle the government by refusing to release the money Congress had appropriated to fund the existing government. Thanks to billionaire Elon Musk at the “Department of Government Efficiency” and Russell Vought—another author of Project 2025—at the Office of Management and Budget, the administration illegally impounded funds, slashing through funding for foreign aid, cancer research, veterans’ benefits, air traffic control staffing, and so on, claiming to be eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.” That fight is ongoing.

But while it shrank government programs that helped ordinary people—programs like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—as part of their claim to be returning power to the states, the administration did not shrink the government itself. Instead, it dramatically expanded the government’s capacity to arrest and detain undocumented migrants.

The administration set out to purge the country of what extremists claimed was “leftist” influence in law firms, media, and universities. It illegally blocked lawyers from law firms that represented Democrats from access to federal buildings, making it impossible for them to represent their clients. It sued media outlets for alleged bias, and it withheld congressionally appropriated funds for universities for alleged antisemitism.

Last week, in order to obtain the Federal Communications Commission's approval of an $8 billion merger between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance Media, Skydance agreed not to set up programs related to civil rights, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and to produce “unbiased” journalism. Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr approved the merger, then bragged on right-wing media shows that CBS has agreed to put in place an internal political “bias monitor” who will report to the president of Paramount to make sure the channel’s news coverage is favorable to Trump and the right wing.

Last week, after Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million and to promise it will not use “race, color, sex, or national origin” in hiring decisions in exchange for the government’s restoring the $1.3 billion in funding the administration had withheld over charges of antisemitism, Trump’s education secretary Linda McMahon told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox (Fake❗) News Channel: “[T]his is a monumental victory for conservatives who’ve wanted to do things on these elite campuses for a long time because we had such far left leaning professors.”

On Monday the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo allowing federal employees to pray publicly at work, as well as to try to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views.”

The administration has worked to dismantle the regulations that protect Americans by using artificial intelligence to slash regulations in half by next January. With the blessing of the Supreme Court, Trump has claimed the power to fire the heads of independent agencies, effectively giving him power over agencies created by Congress.

Yesterday the administration took its fight against public protections a leap further when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new rule that would get rid of a rule in place since 2009 establishing, on the basis of scientific evidence, that the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warms the planet and thus endangers human life. Most of the vehicle, factory, and power plant emissions standards currently in place come from this “endangerment finding.”

EPA officials told Lisa Friedman of the New York Times they intend to argue that it is climate regulations, rather than greenhouse gas emissions, that cause the real harm to human health because they lead to higher prices and less consumer choice.

As Roberts said, the Supreme Court’s decision giving Trump immunity was important because destroying the country’s institutions would require lawbreaking. In nothing has that been so clear as in the administration’s handling of the rendering of undocumented migrants to third countries. Whistleblowers from the Department of Justice claim that DOJ official Emil Bove told DOJ attorneys they could ignore court orders stopping migrant flights, saying they should consider telling the courts “f*ck you.”

Last night, the Senate confirmed Bove to a federal judgeship, with 50 Republicans voting in favor. Forty-seven Democrats voted no. They were joined by Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who said: “I don’t think that somebody who has counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should reject the law, I don’t think that that individual should be placed in a lifetime seat on the bench.”

But Thom Tillis (R-NC) voted in favor of Bove’s confirmation, illustrating that even those Republicans who have put distance between themselves and Trump are enabling the revolution in our government.

Republicans in Congress have enabled the dismantling of the country’s social safety net with dramatic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program while also extending significant tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and pouring money into purges of undocumented migrants. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience at an event for the right-wing media outlet Breitbart that the new “Trump accounts” established by the budget reconciliation bill are “a backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”💢😧❗⚠️

Congress’s unwillingness to stand against Trump shows most dramatically in its reluctance to reassert the power the Constitution gives to it—and only to it—over tariffs. Trump has fought his tariff war only by asserting emergency power, but he has used that power to change world trade and to punish countries like Brazil for its prosecution of Trump’s political ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro. The day before the August 1 deadline, on which most of Trump’s tariffs will go into effect, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will weigh in on whether those tariffs are legal.

When Kevin Roberts announced a year ago that the radical right was launching a second American revolution, he was telling the truth.😱 ❗ But, the new world they want to bring to life seems no more popular now, than it was then.

And now the growing scandal around Donald J. Trump’s connections to late convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein shows that the MAGA movement is apparently willing to accept the sexual abuse of children in order to cement their worldview.

Trump tried to cast himself as a sort of protector when he claimed that he turned against Epstein because Epstein “stole people that worked for me.” When asked if those employees were young women, Trump answered “yes” and that they were hired “out of the spa” he ran. He said one of those girls was Virginia Giuffre, who was sex trafficked as a teenager by Ghislaine Maxwell and died by suicide earlier this year. Although Trump’s timeline did not add up—Guiffre left her job at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 and the friendship between the two men continued for several more years—the story itself suggests what’s on his mind. A reporter asked Trump about those girls: “What did you think Epstein was stealing those women for❓😥”

Today Dan Ruetenik of CBS News issued a detailed report about the video from outside Epstein’s jail cell that the DOJ has released as proof he died by suicide. A government source told Ruetenik that the released video is not raw footage—confirming a report by Dhruv Mehrotra of Wired on July 15—and that it is two videos stitched together. Ruetenik reported that the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the DOJ inspector general all possess the longer video.

And perhaps there is also a story about Project 2025’s staying power in the fact that this damning report was dropped less than a week after Trump officials celebrated their control over CBS.—

Notes:
https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/heritage-foundation-president-celebrates-supreme-court-immunity-decision-we-are

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-project-2025-broadly-known-severely-unpopular-voters-rcna172660

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevin-roberts.html

https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/what-is-project-2025-and-why-is-it-alarming/

https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2025-policy-america.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/here-we-are-2

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/us/politics/generals-trump.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/28/trump-federal-employees-preach-faith-work-00480696

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5479240/columbia-trump-administration-settlement-details

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/business/media/fcc-skydance-merger-paramount.html

https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/supreme-court-puts-humphreys-executor-on-death-bed/
The Epstein Crisis No One Controls
Guest article by Michael Cohen…
Read more
8 hours ago · 855 likes · 130 comments · Michael Cohen and MeidasTouch Network

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-jail-video-investigation/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/26/doge-ai-tool-cut-regulations-trump/

https://www.cms.gov/about-cms/who-we-are/history

Bluesky:
atrupar.com/post/3lupiv74kmm2n

thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lv7afo2dzk2z

© 2025 Heather Cox Richardson
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans enable an environment of anxiety, fear and uncertainty

Echo Letter to the editor: Anxiety, uncertainty and fear due to Donald Trump published in the Wareham Weekly newspaper in Wareham, Massachusetts. 

I have never felt so much anxiety, uncertainty, worry, stress and fear due to one man Donald J. Trump. 

It is unimaginable and unacceptable how he and his entire administration is handling this country that I love.

All of this keeps me up at night not knowing whether I will continue to receive my Social Security benefits, still have health insurance, a roof over my head and food on my table! It’s a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach all this uncertainty and an awful way to live life plus the stress caused by Donald Trump and his horrible policies and cuts are not good at all for my physical and mental health.

I am scared to death of losing everything I have and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone feeling this way! It’s very important that our voices be heard and that’s why I’m writing this letter❗❗❗

From Susan Grebber in Wareham Massachussets 

Calling on Maine Senator Susan Collins to provide leadership like Margaret Chase Smith her heroic predecessor

Echo guest opinion published in The Portland Press Herald in Portland, Maine: Party Invite for Senator Susan Collins

https://www.pressherald.com/2025/04/08/opinion-party-invite-for-sen-susan-collins/

This is a moment in time where the country needs a Margaret Chase Smith... not a coward. A person in Sen. Collins' position holds a great deal of power. 

She should use it. Get a spine, Susan. 

Be more like Margaret Chase Smith, for once❗
Party invite for Sen. Susan Collins

Now might be the time to consider a move away from MAGA world. Please RSVP❗

I know I'm just a rural Mainer, a Democrat from a small Maine town, but I have a suggestion for our Sen. Susan Collins. 

No, not just a suggestion, an invitation too.
Let me start with the suggestion.

Now is the time to change horses 🐎, even though it is in the middle of a stream, because the MAGA trail boss you are following is going the wrong way — getting deeper and deeper. 

And,you have known that for a long, long time.
Let me refresh your memory.

Here's what you said the first time Donald Trump ran for president: "I kept hoping that Donald Trump, once he won the primary, would change. I hoped that we would see a new Donald Trump, one who put forth thoughtful policy positions, stopped denigrating people and had a more positive vision for America. Regrettably, I have concluded that there is not going to be a new Donald Trump, that he's incapable of saying he's sorry, of changing, of learning, of growing." — Aug. 9, 2016

Three times since then you have — by your own proclamations — voted against Donald Trump, against electing him president every time he ran. Although you made the mistake of voting to acquit Trump in his first impeachment trial, you did join seven Republican senators who voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial.

And, in May 2021, you were one of five Republicans who voted with Democratic senators to establish a bipartisan committee to investigate the January 6th insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, calling it "a dangerous, shameful and outrageous attack on our democracy" and blaming Trump for "working up the crowd and inciting this mob."

Even before he took office this time, you said in December that you were "surprised" by his demand to increase the debt ceiling. 

In early February, you called the Trump administration's mass firings "indiscriminate."  You have yet to comment about the firings in the Social Security Administration, even while tens of thousands of your constituents are living on their retirement incomes. 

In late February, you called the decision to cut $4 billion in health research grants "devastating" and a violation of appropriations law. And now you have joined with the Democratic vice chairof the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, in writing a letter to Trump opposing cuts of $3 billion in recently passed emergency funding, again suggesting he is breaking the law: "He does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate."

Meanwhile, your popularity with voters has taken a nosedive.
Public Policy Polling recently reported only 24% of Maine voters now approve of you while 61% disapprove — worse approval numbers than Trump himself gets from Maine voters.

Republicans aren't happy because you are, famously. the most centrist Republican senator in the Senate. You are one of only two pro-choice Republican senators.

You began expressing concern about climate change more than two decades ago ("Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action."— Sept. 7, 2004).

You voted with President Barack Obama much of the time in 2013 as he began his second term, more than any other Republican, and in 2017, you voted against repealing Obamacare, helping kill Trump's pledge to get rid of it his first year in office.

Democrats aren't happy because too often you use words like "surprised" or "concerned" or "troubled" in response to Republican overreach instead of taking action. 

Republicans hold only a slim majority in the U.S.
Senate. If only three Republican senators switched parties and joined the Democrats, or even became independents and caucused with the Democrats, there would be no Senate majority. 

Every vote would become a toss-up.

So, here's the invitation: come join the Democratic Party. We need and will welcome Republicans who realize they have made a mistake. Or at least get off that MAGA horse and become an independent.

Stop following Trump as he leads us into deeper and deeper water. Be a leader — not in words but in deeds.

It is hard to imagine an action that could communicate better to the Republican Party that it needs to wake up and stop acting like it has a mandate to do whatever it wants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gordon Street, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist. He lives in Lincoln, Maine.

Donald Trump created an incompetent cabinet and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is out of touch with American people

Echo opinion letter published in the Scranton Pennsylvania, The Times-Tribune:  Trump’s cabinet is clueless, incompetent

Dear Editor: It’s bad enough that we have a convicted felon occupying the Oval Office, Trump, who is extremely unfit to be president; what makes matters worse is that he has surrounded himself with some of the most incompetent people that he could find. 

Trump selected a billionaire immigrant from South Africa to be his hatchet man to dismantle our vital government agencies. 

Elon Musk, without a clue as to what he is doing, has taken great pleasure in cutting thousands of American workers from their jobs in these agencies.

For Secretary of Defense, Trump selected a weekend Fox (Fake❗) news anchor, Pete Hegseth, who is known to have a drinking problem.  Then, on March 24, it was revealed by Jeff Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic Magazine, that much to his surprise, he was included in a group chat from the Trump administration, on a national security call. A text sent by Secretary Hegseth revealed plans to attack Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15. The text included information about weapons that would be used. Perhaps Secretary Hegseth had a little too much to drink that night.

For Commerce Secretary, Trump selected Howard Lutnick. In an interview Lutnick was asked if personnel cuts to Social Security might lead to senior citizens missing their Social Security checks. Lutnick said most Americans wouldn’t mind if the government skipped a monthly payment. He went on to say that only fraudsters would complain if their checks were a month late.

Apparently this moron doesn’t understand that 70 million Americans rely on their Social Security checks and for many it is their sole income. Howard Lutnick is a perfect example of just how out of touch Republican politicians are with ordinary Americans.

Ben Eglesia, in Dickson City, PA

Calling all Resistance demonstrators to protest the Trumpzi dismantling of our American Constitution

Echo opinion letter published  in the Houston Chronicle newspaper:

Relentless protest and dissent can stop Trump from dismantling our Constitution

It is now painfully obvious that the federal government is being dismantled by Trumpziim and will be put up for sale to the highest bidder. 

1. Social Security-
2. Postal Service-
3. Education will all be privatized 
4. Medicaid will be abolished
5. Criminal justice system will be used to investigate and prosecute innocent citizens who protest. 
6. Financial markets will be monopolized and used to launder money as investors flee to other countries. 
7. Foreign policy and humanitarian aid will become transactional
8. The military will be mobilized to bully our neighbors and restrain citizens. 
9. Minorities and women will be marginalized
10. Environmental disasters due to climate change will be deemed a hoax. 
11. The United States Constitution will not be worth the paper it was printed on. 

Six more months of this and we really will be a Third World country.

Is this the dystopian future we want to leave our grandchildren❓ Trump and Elon Musk have decided to "bull rush" our federal government and must be stopped. 

We are no longer Republicans, independents and Democrats. We are Americans who have unleashed a wannabe mob boss whose lies make P. T. Barnum🎪 🤡look like an amateur. 

So, the only way to stop this will be to flood the GOP sheep 🐑🐑 who call themselves our elected officials with complaints and demand action. Dissent, "sick-outs," work slow-downs, followed by the complete stoppage of purchases of all goods and services except food are desperately needed. Federal public buildings, especially our courts, must be occupied and protests must be loud and persistent. Hopefully, Martin Luther King's enduring legacy will live on because he showed us a blueprint for dissent and resistance, which we must now use again.

From William Carlton, in Tyler, Texas

Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Elon Musk has go to go! Republicans must impeach Trump-Musk evilism NOW!

Echo opinion the editor of the Los Angeles Times: First, Trump illegally froze the distribution of funding allocated by Congress. He has no authority to do this. This alone is a huge breach of the Constitution.

Next, Elon Musk’s unelected “DOGE” minions entered the Office of Personnel Management and gained access to private information about millions of federal employees. They locked senior OPM managers out of their own agency’s computers.

Then Musk and his DOGE folks took control of the U.S. Treasury payments system. They now have the power to stop funding, have access to information about Musk’s competitors, and — worst of all — they have access to our personal Social Security and Medicare data.

None of us, not even the most ardent Trump voter, elected Musk. How is this happening? How is this legal? How is anyone OK with this?

Everyone should be speaking out about this cold, calculated, illegal and blatantly unconstitutional power grab. Everyone should be furious about Musk’s intrusion into our government, our data and our lives. This is not normal. This is not constitutional. We need to stand up, speak out and demand that this stop now.

Marilyn Green, in Malibu California

P.S. ......and wait, there's more:  Published in Your Tango:

Elon Musk gets away with his illegal actions, all free of consequences. there's no doubt that Musk has never had to truly answer for his less-than-tasteful comments on a variety of issues, using his platform to rile people up instead of truly using his influence to make a difference.

As the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $267.3 billion, he's free from worrying about paying fines, owning up to his controversial comments, and using his wealth to squash the narrative of those who oppose him.
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He effectively bends reality to convince others that he isn't wrong, and god forbid anyone disagree. According to a former Tesla executive, "Elon has an uncanny ability to tell a story he wants to be true, convince himself that it has to be true, and then convince others." ☠️

Donald Trump kicks off his failed administration with fake priorities, lies and broken promises

Echo opinion letter published in TribLive a Pennsylvania lonline newspaper (Tribune Review): 

Not only are Republicans breaking with a promise to protect social safety nets for the working class, and poor people, but Trump lied about the origin of the New Orleans terrorist, who was an Americn citizen, and had no ties to Mexican, Central American or South Americn migrants.

Trump's promises and (fake) priorities:  Is anyone registering what Donald Trump is now saying about the price of groceries and Social Security?

I watched at least six times as he promised to lower prices of groceries “on Day 1.” Now he is saying it is complicated and won’t be easy (hint, it’s not 😒going to happen).

What about his promise to not touch Social Security❓

We’re already hearing from GOP Congress members that they will be looking at ways to “rein it in,” including raising the retirement age to 70 and adjusting benefits. I think what Trump is doing instead is laying the groundwork for the $4 trillion tax cut for the very wealthy and large corporations.

Speaking of his priorities, how about going after Ann Selzer for releasing a poll that had Kamala Harris in the lead? Revenge and retribution seem to be his priorities, as well as shutting down any media that isn’t his lap dog. And the people cheer, not understanding that freedom of the press is one of the bedrocks of the Constitution. We need journalists reporting on government activities that don’t align with America, not just Trump mouthpieces.

I see letters loving that he is nominating cabinet members who have no credentials or experience for the position❗ I mean, what could go wrong there❓ The absolute wealthiest cabinet group in American history with the majority being billionaires. The rest are just measly millionaires. Surely they understand our pain and problems so they will be looking out for our interests, not their own❓ If you believe that, I have a bridge 🌉 to sell you 😏.

From Karla Thomas in Hempfield, Pennsylvania

QAnon cult and Trumpism

Dear Editor: Donald Trump has embraced evil QAnon cult.
Dangerous Donald Trump has sold his soul to evil.

Echo opinion letter published in The Cap Times, in Madison, Wisconsin.

The conspiracy theories are so ridiculously crazy they would make you laugh if they weren’t so serious. Forty-three percent of this nation is off its rocker and the logical ones better be making a plan to defend our democracy.

Trump knows how to rile up QAnon and will use them again, as in the January 6th insurrectionist crowd, to do his bidding. When this blows up in our faces, and it will, a lot of them will die or be jailed for a lie, and Trump won’t give a rat’s behind about them. They are just pawns to him, and they don’t understand that.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross," quote attributed to Nobel Prize writer Sinclair Lewis.

He said he wants a third world war. How does that make you feel? Voters who want democracy better get out in droves or you will lose more than women’s health rights. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will be right behind, then they’re coming for your children’s education.

It is this man’s goal to turn this nation into an S-hole country.

From Kevin Smith Neillsville, Wisconsin 

Truth check- inflation and deficits are Republican smoke screens

Republicanism, stupidism and Houdiniism 

Here we go again, same song, second verse, (wash, rinse repeat) orchestrated by Republicans in wrong minded attacks on President Joe Biden.

Tulsa World echo opinion letter:

Don't be fooled by Republicans' hysteria over inflation, deficit

First verse was inflation, second verse is deficits. Don’t buy into either unless you love recessions with the accompanying increase in unemployment and decrease in wages.

The inflation rate should not have caused hysteria until inflation exceeded double digits. Deficit reduction will cut into Social Security, Medicare and other social programs.

Don’t be so easily manipulated by this Houdini art of misdirection by Republicans. They don’t care about you. All they care about is gaining control of the House and Senate and the White House.

From Frieda Hale, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Vote Blue in 2020 to protect American democracy- stop Donald Trump

Choice for 2020 election is clear: Freedom from tyranny or life under Trump?

To the editor of The Sun Chronicle a Massachusetts newspaper:

It’s amazing to listen to Daffy Donald Trump attack four women who were elected by a majority of people from the districts they represent. This fact makes them more legitimate than Trump who lost his election by close to 3 million votes. He won by an outdated system that allows the loser to become the winner. We must be the only country in the world who hold free elections to have such a moronic system that elects someone to the highest office in the country.

These four women speak for the people of the districts they represent, not the entire country, but they have a right to be heard and push for things the voters put them there to do. Trump tries to label the entire Democratic party as Socialist, which they are not. For my part I would rather be on the side of people with Socialist ideas than people from the alt-right who support Trump and his hate speech. This is all he has to give them because he has no ideas — it’s just spin and lies, day in and day out.

People who support Trump do not like to be labeled ignorant, racist, or hateful, but that is just what they are.

These people actually cannot tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Trump is trying to turn America into an authoritarian form of government where anyone who speaks against him will be silenced or attacked. To my way of thinking, anyone supporting Trump is actually against America, not for it. You are the people who do not like our Constitution or rule of law. 

Thank God for the Socialist ideas that gave us Medicare and Social Security and so much more.

At least the 2020 election is a clear choice. Would you like to live in a country like North Korea or Russia under (evil!) Trump or an America that works for all the people?

Aldo Ferrario
Mansfield

Donald Trump - the cruel budget with broken promises

To say the budget is revolting and immoral would be a vast understatement.- Mel Gurtov

Moreover, the cruel Trump budget breaks his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare.

Donald Trump's cruel budget is another broken promise to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries

Make no cuts to Medicare

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”- Donald Trump

An echo opinion essay published in the Biddeford Maine Journal Tribune, by Mel Gurtov, a syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.

Two things can be said with certainty about Donald Trump’s 2020 budget request: It is DOA, dead on arrival, in the House; and it is a political document, catering to his loyal supporters, rather than a serious fiscal statement.

What the budget request reveals is that Trump, left to his own devices, would further skewer the middle class and low-income groups, downgrade diplomacy and environmental protection, give the military more than it really wants or needs, and fulfill his obsession with a border wall. To say the budget is revolting and immoral would be a vast understatement. But it may (and should) give Democrats additional evidence of Trump’s unfitness to lead.

Below is a quick breakdown of the budget proposal. 

The Washington Post has a very good analysis March 13, and is the source for the figures below.

Proposed changes to funding in Trump’s budget

-31 percent Environmental Protection Agency
-24 percent State and USAID
-19 percent Transportation
-16 percent Housing and Urban Development
-15 percent Agriculture
-14 percent Interior
-12 percent Health and Human Services
-12 percent Education
-11 percent Energy
-10 percent Labor
-2 percent Justice
-2 percent NASA
-2 percent Treasury
+5 percent Defense
+7 percent Commerce
+7 percent Homeland Security
+8 percent Veterans Affairs

Key proposed additions

— Adds more than $33 billion to the Department of Defense budget, for a total of $718 billion, 57 percent of the proposed federal discretionary budget
— Allocates $8.6 billion to build sections of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, on top of the close to $7 billion Trump already announced in his national emergency declaration
— Sets aside $750 million to establish a paid parental leave program and $1 billion for a one-time fund to help underserved populations and encourage company investment in child-care
— Commits $291 million toward ending the spread of HIV in the United States within a decade, a promise Trump made in his State of the Union last month

Key proposed cut$

— Cuts $845 billion over the next 10 years from Medicare, the federal program that provides health insurance to older Americans
— Removes $241 billion from Medicaid, the health-care program for low-income Americans, over the next decade as part of an overhaul that shifts more power to states
— Slashes $220 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade, with proposed reforms including mandatory work requirements and food box delivery service in lieu of cash benefits for low-income families
— Reductions to the federal student loan programs that total $207 billion in the next 10 years and include eliminating Public Service Loan Forgiveness and subsidized student loans.

Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.

Tulsa World opinion letter about the wrong minded Republican agenda

Democrats must vote out all Republicans described in a Tulsa World opinion letter:

• Only one party has repeatedly worked to take away health care coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
• Only one party is deporting immigrants who fought for our country in the U.S. military.
• Only one party passed a tax bill where 83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent of the richest Americans.
• Only one party is trying to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits to pay for those tax cuts.
• Only one party has 2018 candidates that include white nationalists and Holocaust deniers.
• Only one party has a presidential administration whose employees have been fired for domestic abuse, criminal records and for having ties to hate groups.
• Only one party separated parents from their kids without a plan to track or reunite them.
• Only one party has Roy Moore, Blake Farenthold, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Chris Collins, Vern Buchanan and Duncan Hunter.
• Only one party has a Cabinet whose members are the subject of dozens of investigations for wasting taxpayer money to pay
• Only one party benefited from Russian election interference in 2016 and then committed alleged election fraud in North Carolina in 2018.

The GOP- right wing Republican Party, is the party of criminals and corruption. Vote them (all!) out (next time)!

Casey Manning, Tulsa

What will House Democrats "Do"?

Laurence J. Kotlikoff  Professor of Economics, Boston University

This expert essay was published in The Conversation. Although I'm certainly not an economist, I agree with most of the analysis by Laurence Kotlikoff. 

Yet, I disagree with his assessment about Social Security. Surely, it would help if Republican paid back the money robbed from the trust fund to fund other "pork" programs. 

But, for the most part, this is good expert advise to the New Democratic Majority in the US House of Representatives:
Now that Democrats control the House, the question on many minds is what they will do with it.

Incoming Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Democrats will focus on corruption, money in politics, drug prices, gun control and protecting young immigrants. 

Although these are important, in my view, they are second-order issues.

The biggest challenges facing the U.S. are much deeper and seriously jeopardize Americans’ future prosperity. Namely, soaring national debt, Social Security’s solvency and the lack of affordable health care.

As an economist, I’ve spent a lot of time researching and writing about these issues. And as a presidential candidate in 2016, I tried to put them on the national agenda when I staged an independent write-in campaign.

Were I leading the House Democrats right now, I would focus on passing three key bills. The Senate would likely turn them down, but their passage would show the country that Democrats are prepared to govern.
The US$200 trillion fiscal gap

It starts by acknowledging the true state of America’s fiscal condition.

No politician that I know of has ever told the truth about this, either because he or she didn’t know the truth or were hiding it. Brace yourself. Here’s where we really stand.

The official debt is $21.7 trillion – more than the value of all goods and services that will be produced in the U.S. this year. But this ignores massive unfunded obligations that have been kept off the books, such as paying for future Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

When you calculate the present value of all anticipated future outlays less all the receipts projected by the Congressional Budget Office, you get a whopping $200 trillion fiscal gap. This is how much we – or more accurately our children – really owe.

Closing this fiscal gap will require dramatic changes, including much higher taxes and drastic spending cuts. Yes, Republicans hate the former and Democrats loathe the latter. But the longer we wait to do this, the larger the taxes our kids – or theirs – will pay and the lower the benefits they will receive. And at some point, America’s decades long intergenerational Ponzi scheme will collapse.

There is hope, however. Several simulations and studies I’ve conducted suggest three basic reforms that could largely eliminate the $200 trillion fiscal gap – while reducing risinglevels of inequality in the process.
Real tax reform

Let’s start with taxes.
The current fiscal system is riddled with inefficiencies, and what’s worse it lets the superrich pay literally zero taxes. This means there are ways to increase revenue without creating major burdens on the poor or middle class.

I would ask the now Democrat-controlled House Ways and Means Committee to draw up legislation to get rid of the current corporate income, personal income and FICA taxes. I would replace them with a value added tax, a highly progressive personal consumption tax, a progressive payroll tax and a high carbon tax.

These changes would dramatically improve incentives to work and save, make the rich pay their fair share and help save the climate – all while increasing revenues by 5 percent of GDP.
Modern Social Security

Of our nation’s $200 trillion fiscal gap, $34 trillion is Social Security’s unfunded liability – that is, how much we owe tomorrow’s retirees beyond how much revenue the system is expected to take in. This is why by the early 2030s, Social Security will be out of money, requiring a bailout or a draconian and permanent benefit cut that’s close to one-quarter. (MaineWriter, it could help if Republicans paid back the trust fund with money borrowed and never replaced.)

Democratic hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped establish Social Security in 1935. As such, it’s the party’s baby. They want to protect and preserve it at all costs.

It’s not just the system’s finances that are a problem but also its structure. The system has hundreds of thousands of incomprehensible rules. It’s a bureaucrat’s fantasy and a user’s nightmare.

The solution, however, isn’t to save it but to retire it – and replace it with something better. Social Security was based on the idea that today’s workers can support today’s retirees. While your benefits are tied to how much you earned, longer lifespans mean the payouts last much longer than a half-century ago.

A simple system that is more directly linked to what each person sets aside for retirement, with proceeds invested in the same global index fund, free of fees, would be simple, transparent and fully funded. The government would match contributions by the poor and contribute in full on behalf of the disabled and unemployed.
Affordable insurance for everyone

Another top priority should be health care, the biggest concern among midterm voters.

Close to 30 million Americans are uninsured – up 3 million since President Donald Trump took office.

Given today’s health care costs, even an unexpected gall bladder operation can bankrupt an uninsured middle-class household. No American should be forced to live with such financial risk. Everyone, not just the president and his family, needs basic coverage. Since a big chunk, roughly $60 trillion, of our $200 trillion debt comes from Medicare and Medicaid, the challenge as I see it is how to make universal basic health care affordable for the government.

Bernie Sanders and other liberal politicians argue the path to universal health care is “Medicare for all.” I advocate something slightly different: “Medicare Part C for all.”

Also known as the Advantage Plan, Medicare Part C pays HMOs to provide basic health care coverage, including outpatient and inpatient care, prescription drugs and other services, for the poor. It currently covers one-third of Medicare participants. Let’s just expand it to everyone. Yes, Medicare Part C limits you to one provider. But you can change providers annually.

Under the plan, every American would receive an annual voucher based on his or her pre-existing conditions. The voucher would be larger for those with higher expected health care costs. The voucher would be used to purchase, in full, the system’s single basic health insurance plan from one’s chosen health insurer. No insurer could refuse coverage to any participant regardless of their pre-existing conditions or place of residence.

It would be affordable because, although it allows for multiple private providers, it would be single-payer – which would dramatically reduce costs.

‘Heed the call’

There are a lot of issues that I also think should be high on Democrats’ priority list, such as meaningful banking reform and ensuring all American children get an equal education. But tackling America’s crushing debt load and reducing the fiscal gap – issues that Republicans have previously indicated they care about – would pay the biggest dividends and show Democrats can identify and solve real problems.

Will the Democrats take advantage of their “blue wave” and pursue such an agenda? I hope so. There are lots of new blue members of Congress that ran on fixing the country, not playing political games. As they ponder their first steps in 116th Congress, they would do well to heed Bob Dylan’s lyrics: Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled.

Taxes are how Republicans fund their own agendas

A letter to the editor echo opinion published in the Connecticut newspaper New Haven Register: 

Republicans always forget to tell you that taxpayer money was always supposed to be used to make American lives better. 

They do not tell you that our elected officials — especially Republicans — need to make large corporations, insurance companies, big Pharma, their lobbyists, etc., happy with their votes, or said people might not finance their next election. See how nicely he pats you on the head, if sometimes you need assistance from his government? ie: “they strip you of your dignity and dilute your motivation”. All the while telling you that if we would just stop helping you, you will all become outrageously self-sufficient.

Republicans need those taxpayer dollars to keep building battleships, keeping those defense contractors making maximum profits, just as Dick Cheney became rich because of the Iraq war, through Halliburton Industries. They need to cut funding for education, infrastructure, and all the things we need to improve our lives, so they can fulfill the dreams of the lobbyists, to whom they have sold their soul. Just follow the money, folks, and you will end up running into some Republicans, trying to make their rich friends richer.

Democrats, historically, beginning with FDR, have put the people first. Who brought our country out of the Great Depression, after the Gilded Age millionaires took over our economy? They are certainly not all altruistic souls, to be sure, but I’ll bank on them before I will bank on people who can only find Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, health care and education as cost-cutting vehicles. This government was founded: Of the people, for the people, and by the people, as so beautifully noted in Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. 

Let’s vote in progressives, and Democrats and get our country back, people! Enough of their insipid head-patting and shaming those who are often struggling just to keep food on the table, and a roof over their heads.

Patricia Garcia,
New Haven Connecticut

America's deficit has increased by 33 percent over 11 months

Echo: A Newsday Editorial (Long Island, New York) republished in the Wisconsin Kenosha News. 

The economy of the United States might be (temporarily) booming (workforce shortages notwithstanding), but the finances are going bust. In the first 11 months of fiscal 2017, the nation’s budget deficit was $674 billion. For the first 11 months of fiscal 2018, it was $898 billion, an increase of 33 percent. President Donald Trump’s administration now says the annual shortfall will exceed $1 trillion in 2019 and remain above that level for at least three years.

The deficit has exceeded $1 trillion in only four years, from 2009 through 2012, when unemployment of 8 percent to 10 percent depressed income tax receipts, low corporate profits reduced tax revenue and federal spending spiked to provide for struggling Americans, stimulate the economy and help fund state and local governments.

Such colossal deficits now lack any such excuses. Unemployment is around 4 percent, a historic low (driving workforce shortages), and corporate profits are at all-time highs. Happy days should be here again when it comes to fiscal sanity, but corporate tax receipts have dropped 20 percent since Donald Trump’s tax cuts took effect in early 2018. Income tax payments are up just 1 percent. And government spending under Trump has skyrocketed.

The answer, Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow told the Economic Club of New York, is being “tougher on spending” when it comes to the “larger entitlements.” (HELLO? Beneficiaries pay for our entitlements!)

The growth in spending on social programs is a real problem. Social Security outlays are up 8 percent this year, reflecting an increase in recipients, and Medicare spending is up 9 percent. But interest on the national debt has increased 13 percent this year. And military spending is up almost 10 percent, to $700 billion.

The average monthly Social Security check is $1,404. Cutting such benefits or making people work much past the current full retirement age of 67 before they can claim that benefit would not be humane, sensible or popular. Neither would cutting the Medicare benefits that provide health care to seniors or the Medicaid benefits that pay the costs of 62 percent of nursing home residents and the health care costs of 30 million children.

Trump is trying to nickel-and-dime the people who least deserve such treatment. He recently canceled next year’s scheduled 2.1 percent pay increase for federal employees, writing that he can do so because of “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare” of the United States. 

And he is fighting for a farm bill that would take food stamps from several million recipients. (This is wrong minded and cruel farm policy.  It makes no economic sense whatsoever. Eventually, this Donald Trump policy will drive up the cost of food for everybody by causing farmers to plant less crops.)

Trump and his advisers are crowing about a booming economy and crying poverty when it comes to caring for the nation. They have cut taxes, benefiting mostly the very wealthy, at a cost of $1.5 trillion over 10 years, and now say they must cut the social safety net, which mostly benefits the nation’s children and elderly, to pay for it.

Republicans may not implement their plans to slash social programs, but the increasing costs of those programs are real, as are the spiraling deficits generated by Trump’s tax cuts and huge hikes in military spending. If denying Americans needed benefits (to beneficiaries who earned their entitlements) is the GOP plan to restore fiscal sanity, that’s disturbing. And if that awful scheme isn’t the GOP’s way to restore fiscal sanity, then it has no plan at all.

Christians respond to Tax Cuts for the Rich ~ GOP and Zacchaeus

Tax cuts for the rich are paid for by the middle class.

An echo letter to the editor, published in the Jacksonville Times-Union newspaper.

Donald Trump signed into law a tax bill that cut taxes for large corporations and America’s wealthiest individuals by slashing trillions of dollars over the next decade from programs that serve low-income and middle-class families.

The law puts Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and nutrition assistance programs at risk.

While millions of Americans file their taxes, it’s important for them to reflect on why we must fight to preserve social programs that feed our kids and keep our communities healthy.

As a pastor, I can say with certainty that Jesus cares about taxes. 

As a man who walked the Earth feeding the hungry and healing the sick, Jesus would decry a cruel, immoral tax plan.

A just society will make sure that everyone pays their fair share to protect working families. The Republican tax cuts for the rich punishes people for being poor.

The tax plan also destabilizes the health insurance markets, making it more difficult and expensive for our most vulnerable citizens to access the health care that they need.
This breaks one of the two core commandments of my faith: to love your neighbor as yourself. That love means we must have compassion, not a cruel tax bill.

As a person of faith, I believe in forgiveness and repentance.

The tax bill that this Congress passed is cruel and unjust, but that doesn’t mean it is irreversible.

Just as Zacchaeus, a tax collector in the Bible, repented and gave back to people what he had stolen from them, so Congress needs to recognize that the legislation it passed will hurt people.

The gospel of Luke doesn’t go into detail about what Zacchaeus did after his encounter with Jesus.

I like to think that he went back to his job changed, with a renewed focus on what is right for the poor — and a new commitment not to steal.

Will Congress have a Zacchaeus moment and commit to doing what is right? (MaineWriter ~ Reject tax cuts for the rich! America can change this greedy law by voting all Republicans out of office!)

Mt. Olive Primitive Baptist Church,

Jacksonville, FL
Elder Lee Harris, pastor,

Echo from Bozeman MT - proof of failed trickle down

This letter from Bozeman Montana offers evidence of how the "trickle down" economic theory doesn't work.  In other words, "tax cuts for the rich" won't help the middle class. Corporations will get richer while the middle class will pay for the growing national deficit.

An "Echo" letter to the editor from Ken Busch from Livingston, Montana published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Republican orthodoxy contends that throwing billions at the Ivankas and Paris Hiltons among us leads to economic growth. 

This despite convincing evidence that the 

• Bush tax cuts led to the Great Recession, 
• Reagan’s second big tax cut to the Reagan recession, and 
• Coolidge’s cuts to the Great Depression 

If trickle down works, why does the Walton family (WalMart) own so much of the country while their workers collect Medicaid and run food drives for themselves? Walmart workers collected $6.2 billion in government aid in 2014.

Very recently Kansas passed massive tax cuts, and their education system suffered and surrounding states sprinted past it in economic growth. For this disaster red-state Kansas voters gave GOP Gov. Sam Brownback a swift kick out of the statehouse.

Only a tiny fraction of CEOs claim they will hire more or raise wages because of the corporate giveaways. Most say they will engage in stock buy backs, which benefits their personal bottom lines. Businesses need customers, not tax cuts. What else do the .01 percent, who have as much wealth as the bottom 22 percent of us, buy except more industrial robots and politicians? Broadly based cuts would help economic growth more these policies that send 82 percent of cuts to the richest people in history while lining the pockets of the Trumps and the “Corker kickback” crowd, i.e. Congress.

Regular taxpayers now get attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, increases in local government fees and taxes and a small tax cut that expires in a few years!

However, Republicans gave the Pentagon 21 fighter jets it doesn’t even want but can’t bring itself to extend the CHIP program for kid’s health care. Sen. Daines and Rep. Gianforte should join Brownback in political exile.

Ken Busch, Livingston Montana, letter published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle