TNR reports: "The Trump Administration Just Violated Another Court Order -- It gets worse: The order found that the administration was covertly withholding millions in FEMA funds from blue states --
A federal judge ruled Friday that the president violated a court order to stop freezing federal funds by withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency relief to at least 19 states. The judge said that the Trump administration seemed to be making a “covert” effort to punish states whose immigration practices differed from the White House. U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued an injunction in March on behalf of 23 states that sued the federal government after the White House moved to pause aid to states, ruling that the move “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.” On Friday, McConnell found that the Trump administration disregarded the court order, with at least 19 states, all of whom with Democratic attorneys general, presenting “undisputed evidence” that they were not receiving FEMA funds already appropriated by Congress. The judge noted that this appeared to be in accordance with Trump’s executive order barring “sanctuary” states from receiving aid."This is yet more evidence of the raw authoritarian intent and cruelty of both djt and the elite MAGA thugs he has put in power. MAGA and djt are openly punishing innocent American citizens without regard for the harms or deaths they cause. They are killers, pure and simple.
A peanut comments: Selectively withholding FEMA funds of Blue states because of policy disagreements. Literally, he's willing to have Americans killed who disagree with him. It's not like Trump has been quiet about wanting to punish blue states, and it's not like his voters are upset about it either. They're happy to sacrifice other people to punish the ones they hate.
Q: Although the US isn't yet a full-blown kleptocratic dictatorship/plutocracy/Christian nationalist theocracy, about how close on a scale of 1-11 (1 = not close at all, 11 = it's a done deal) are we to (1) a tipping point beyond which kleptocratic authoritarianism is almost certainly inevitable, and (2) being an actual full-blown kleptocratic authoritarian state with only a fig leaf left of democracy?
Germaine's assessment: 9 for tipping point, 8 for actual kleptocratic authoritarian state
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I now firmly believe (~94% confidence level) that without Russian actions in the 2016 election, Clinton would have won. Now, in open deference to Putin, djt has gutted federal cyberdefense operations. That leaves Russia to freely interfere with any American election it chooses to pollute with its psyops. The NYT reports (not paywalled): "Trump Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses at a Moment of Rising Danger -- The firing of the head of the National Security Agency was only the latest move that has eroded the country’s fortifications against cyberattacks, especially those targeting elections -- When President Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday, it was the latest in a series of moves that have torn away at the country’s cyberdefenses just as they are confronting the most sophisticated and sustained attacks in the nation’s history. His dismissal came after weeks in which the Trump administration swept away nearly all of the government’s election-related cyberdefenses beyond the secure N.S.A. command centers at Fort Meade, Md. At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation’s complex early-warning system for cyberattacks, a web through which tech firms work with the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, pipelines and telecommunications networks. .... America’s huge vulnerabilities, made evident in recent years as China placed malware in its rival’s utility grids and the telecom system, illustrate how easy a target the United States is for retaliation. As a top cyberofficial in the Defense Department during the Biden administration used to point out, “we live in the glassiest house.” "
The insulting blither coming from elite MAGA thug, and all-around idiot, national security adviser Michael Waltz* is that the US have been playing mostly defense and needs to go more on offense. But the problem is that the US is terribly vulnerable to a massive cyberattack. Now, djt and MAGA have destroyed what took at least 10 years to build on no rational basis at all. The US can do both offense and defense at the same time. Given the staggering irrationality of the US unilaterally dropping its defenses, this has to be a gift or payback to Putin for his past help with djt's career.
* Waltz was one of the incompetent MAGA idiots on the recent phone call that disclosed US war plans on unsecured phones.
Q: On a scale of 1-9 (1 = low importance, 11 = highest importance) how serious is this national security gift to Putin?
Germaine's assessment: 9
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Incompetent MAGA idiot Mike Waltz
US national security traitor
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The NYT reports about the massive, ongoing MAGA effort to Whitewash and rewrite history: "The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of It -- As the Trump administration pulls government websites and data offline, it is selectively stripping away the public record, letting the president declare his own version of history, archivists and historians said -- Soon after the new administration arrived, things began to go missing from the White House website. They weren’t just the partisan policy platforms that typically disappear during a presidential transition. Informational pages about the Constitution and past presidents, up in various forms since President George W. Bush was in office, all vanished. Thousands of other government web pages had also been taken down or modified, including content about vaccines, hate crimes, low-income children, opioid addiction and veterans, before a court order temporarily blocked part of the sweeping erasure. A Justice Department database tracking criminal charges and convictions linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was removed. Segments of data sets are gone, some of the experts who produced them were dismissed, and many mentions of words like “Black,” “women” and “discrimination” have evaporated. President Trump’s team is selectively stripping away the public record, reconstructing his preferred vision of America in the negative space of purged history, archivists and historians said."
That speaks for itself. Again, this is more evidence of the cruel, cynical, corrupt authoritarian world devoid of inconvenient facts, true truths and sound reasoning that djt and MAGA elites are intent on building. The stench of moral rot is beyond words.
Qs: 1) What level of culpability, if any, do supporters of djt and MAGA politicians bear for all the damage, false beliefs, theft and cruelty that their votes and continuing support for MAGA is causing? None, 15%, 30%, 50%, 65%, 80%, or something else? 2) What about people who did not vote for Harris?
Germaine's assessment: 1) ~45%, 2) ~45%
