Category: American Empire

By Jessica Piper / Politico / Feb. 20-21, 2025

Donald Trump’s honeymoon may be wearing off.

New polls show a majority of Americans say he has overstepped his presidential authority — and hasn’t done enough to address high prices.

Two new polls from CNN/SSRS and The Washington Post/Ipsos show the GOP president’s approval rating underwater (47-52 in the CNN poll, 45-53 in the Post), a shift from polling earlier this year that found voters roughly divided on him, with some surveys even showing a positive approval rating.

Trump’s poll numbers are at an historic low for this spot in any president’s first month in modern times. SEE: Rachel Maddow’s blistering analysis of recent polls — video.

One reason for the erosion of support: a slight majority of respondents in both surveys said Trump has overstepped his presidential power in his attempts to reshape the federal government driven by tech billionaire Elon Musk. Many of Trump’s most controversial early initiatives, including a sweeping spending freeze, have been blocked in court thus far, but the new administration has still made waves with layoffs of federal workers, cuts to federal contracts and a flood of executive orders.

Newsweek / February 20, 2025

The White House has released photos styling President Donald Trump as a king on social media.

The administration’s official X (formerly Twitter) account posted a fake paper cover in the style of Time Magazine, with the caption: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”

Why It Matters — In the initial stages of his second presidency, Trump has faced criticism for his consistent use of executive orders to make changes to the federal government. The images give his critics, who fear he is consolidating power in the executive branch at the expense of courts, more ammunition.

What To Know — On Wednesday, the White House’s official X account released the image, which appears to be AI-generated.

By Erwin Chemerinsky / OpEd LA Times / Feb. 10, 2025

If one were to design a path to authoritarian rule, it would be what we have seen in the first weeks of the Trump administration. For my book No Democracy Lasts Forever, I studied how democracies die and are replaced by authoritarian regimes. Almost always the rulers are elected rather than coming to power through a coup, and then they consolidate authority and silence their critics.

Where are we on the path?

Checks and balances are being destroyed. The quintessential legislative power is control over the purse. But President Trump and those around him have asserted that he can control that by refusing to spend money appropriated by federal statute. The newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, at his confirmation hearings, was explicit that the president could refuse to spend funds notwithstanding a federal law — the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — that prohibits this. And the president already has done this on a large scale, by signing an executive order freezing a massive amount of federal expenditures (enjoined by two federal courts), and by all but eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was created and funded by federal statutes. At the same time, he has asserted the power to spend money without congressional authorization as in the offer of a buyout to federal workers.

Breaking down the president’s suggestion — and whether it’s a distraction, a negotiating ploy or something more.

by Aaron Blake / Washington Post / Feb. 5, 2025

President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered the most untethered idea of an increasingly untethered second term.

Trump said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip,” will “own it” long-term and will redevelop it — even floating turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s promise has shocked the Middle East, Trump’s opponents and his domestic allies alike. Pursuing such a course would mean the displacement of 2 million Palestinians from their land — Trump proposed setting up “various domains” for them elsewhere — and injecting Americans into the cauldron of the Middle East.

It would also in all likelihood require a massive mobilization of U.S. troops, despite Trump’s years-long attacks on the concept of foreign nation-building.

The immediate question is, of course, whether he’s actually serious. Here are a few theories.

As a government shutdown looms, it has become crystal clear that the richest man in the world is holding America hostage over his stalling of a House agreement on a spending plan. President Elon Musk now appears to be running the government, somebody who’s never been elected to anything in America.

The US is hours away from a government shutdown unless Congress agrees on such a . The House failed Thursday to pass a new Donald Trump-backed GOP proposal to fund the government into March, ratcheting up the threat of a shutdown ahead of the midnight deadline.

In a last-minute bid to avert a shutdown, House GOP leaders are now eyeing a strategy that would allow lawmakers to take separate votes on funding the government and raising the debt limit. GOP members are expected to meet this afternoon to discuss the latest proposal, according to lawmakers and aides.

Trump said Friday morning that if there has to be a government shutdown, he wants it to occur while Joe Biden is president. Trump tanked an original bipartisan deal unveiled Wednesday.

Editordude: The following is but the beginning of a more longer piece by Peter Bohmer, a good friend of the Rag and former OBcean who now lives in Olympia, Washington.

by Peter Bohmer / November 21, 2024

Trump’s victory is a serious loss for most people in the United States and globally. I disagreed before the election and now, that it didn’t matter who won the Presidential election. Let us mourn and grieve but not give up. Elections matter and this one certainly does but being political means building and gaining power, being active to further what you believe in, much more than voting or supporting a candidate.

I don’t know if any campaign would have caused a Kamala Harris victory.

Ah… the good life.

“I stand squarely behind my decision,”President Joe Biden said Monday. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”

Biden said the collapse of the 20-year American military involvement in Afghanistan proved he was correct to end the U.S. mission, arguing that the Taliban’s takeover of the country vindicated his decision to bring home the U.S. troops stationed there. …

In making this statement and defending his decision, Biden stood up to the US war machine, the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.

Washington’s War in Afghanistan Is Over. What Happens Now?

President Biden was right to withdraw US troops. But we should have no illusion that this will end the war for Afghans.

By Phyllis Bennis / The Nation / August 16, 2021
We don’t know yet what the consequences

US Retreats as Taliban Take Kabul

By Jon Queally / Common Dreams / August 15, 2021

Nearly two full decades of lies and wishful thinking from U.S. generals,

There ‘Will Never Be’ a US Military Solution in Afghanistan: Rep. Barbara Lee

By Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams / August 16, 2021

Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee—who cast the sole vote

The San Diego Union-Tribune of late has been running numerous op-eds about the current plight of the Cuban people and even how the US must intervene. The ferocity of these one-sided rants makes it seem like the old Cold War has reignited. And calls for the Biden administration to militarily intervene are stark reminders that the official policy of this government has been to squelch the efforts by Cubans to have their own country ever since the revolution began 22 years ago.

Well, there is a different reality out there other than the narrative propagated by the mainstream media. Here are views you won’t find in the U-T:

Full-Page Ad in the New York Times, July 23, 2021:

Dear President Joe Biden,

It is time to take a new path forward in U.S.-Cuban relations. We, the undersigned, are making this urgent, public appeal to you to reject the cruel policies put into place by the Trump White House that have created so much suffering among the Cuban people.

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.

by Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel / ProPublica / June 8

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same