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This is the First Day at the End of America [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-21
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who had one of the most successful administrations in history have departed the White House to be replaced by the Orange Hobgoblin of Doom. I say this without a hint of hyperbole, but the reign of the Grifter Convict-In-Chief has begun and it’s up to us to fight and hobble his efforts in any way that we can.
Today, using executive orders, he is at the height of his powers without any check by Congress, but his actions remain vulnerable to the courts which is where Democratic and Progressive organizations can cut him down to size.
First, we need to point out emphatically — that he’s a giant liar.
x x YouTube Video “There were a lot of big lies there,” Dale, a senior reporter, said Monday night during the network’s extended coverage of Trump’s inauguration. He first started with Trump’s claim that the United States is the only country that offers birthright citizenship: “That's not close to true.” “At least a couple dozen countries have it, including U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico,” Dale said. He next went after Trump’s repeated claim “that the U.S. took hundreds of billions of dollars in from China, thanks to the tariffs he imposed in his first term.” In actuality, Dale noted, “that revenue came from U.S. citizens” because “U.S. importers pay those tariffs and often pass off the costs to U.S. consumers.” CNN’s in-house fact checker continued down a litany of other fabrications he said Trump made as he signed executive orders on live TV in the White House’s Oval Office, including pardons for roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters. “He spoke again about how NATO, European members of NATO, have contributed $200 billion less to Ukraine than the U.S. has,” Dale told viewers. “In fact, data shows that the European members have provided tens of billions more aid than the U.S. has. So he has that reversed again. He repeated his assertion that China controls the Panama Canal. China has influence in the area and China-linked companies operate two ports on the canal, but that canal is operated by the Panamanian Canal Authority, staffed by Panamanian board members, Panamanian employees." Dale proclaimed that statement an “exaggeration at least.” He closed his fact-checking spree with Trump’s assertions related to the 2020 election. “He said the Democrats cheated like dogs. I think he was referring to the 2020 election regardless, not true, no basis for it,” Dale said. “He repeated something he said earlier today, he said the January 6 committee deleted all of the evidence, all of the records, just did not happen.” Finally, Dale pointed out that Trump “repeated his false claim that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supposedly rejected his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6.” That claim is false, according to Dale as he noted “There's no evidence he made an offer to her and he, not the House Speaker, had the power to deploy or not deploy the D.C national guard.”
MAGAs accept these lies as given, they accept them as Gospel. And that’s why the challenge isn’t just to counter the entire MAGA movement which is based entirely on fear, paranoia, lies and delusions.
During this first day, just as he’d warned us all, he did a lot of damage. But the legality and Constitutionality of his orders must be challenged.
New York City business lawyer Ray Beckerman responded to reports that Trump will no longer recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants by writing, "Uh, that would be unconstitutional." It is an order that is likely to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, and Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern said it would be hard to argued that the order doesn't violate the Constitution's 14th Amendment, "I do not hold this Supreme Court in high esteem, but I feel very confident that it will not allow Trump to 'end' birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants—by executive order, legislation, or any other means short of a constitutional amendment," said Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern. "The original meaning of the 14th Amendment is extraordinarily clear in its grant of birthright citizenship to virtually all people born in the U.S. The Supreme Court settled this issue in 1898. Today’s SCOTUS is very conservative, but not so insane as to unwind this fundamental guarantee IMO," he added.
Yeah, we’ll — just how insane are they? Now is when we find out.
Fortunately, some of these lawsuits have already begun.
Then there’s his agenda to declare that there are “only two sexes” even though biological science does not support this notion.
One anti-transgender executive order bans all funding to programs that even acknowledge and affirm transgender people's existence. In response, Georgia law school professor Anthony Michael Kreis said, "The executive branch cannot create funding conditions not blessed by Congress. Depending on what the EO looks like, courts would have to agree with an interpretation of Title IX that affirming trans people is inherently a form of sex discrimination. This is absolute insanity. Pure sex stereotyping." Legal analyst Max Kennerly similarly agreed with the assessment on that order, "This is facially discriminatory with no rational connection to a legitimate purpose, so legally this EO stands on the same footing as "federal funds will be withheld from any program that acknowledges Catholics." But with our federal courts... Take a bow, NYTImes & The Atlantic, you did this." Lawfare's managing editor Tyler McBrien said of the proposed executive orders , "As we brace for the flurry of Trump admin EOs this afternoon, it's good to keep in mind that, in the wise words of @alanrozenshtein.com, executive orders 'are not magical documents. They’re just press releases with nicer stationery.'"
He, yet again, pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords — which could have sweeping implications for the entire planet for generations. If you think the wildfires in California and the Hurricanes in North Carolina were bad this year, buckle up, that is only the beginning. He says he wants to greatly expand oil drilling even though the US is already the greatest oil-producing country in the history of the world.
1. United States. The US is the largest oil-producing country in the world, with output of 21.91 million barrels per day in 2023, taking the spot for the sixth year in a row. The US has been described as a swing producer because its production fluctuates alongside market prices.
Yeah, but let that reality stand in his way to expand offshore drilling — which increases the risk of yet another Deep Water Horizon disaster, but also drilling in Arctic preserves like ANWAR which can do permanent ecological damage.
He’s declaring a “National Energy Emergency” even though no emergency exists.
WASHINGTON — American energy production hit all-time maximums under just-departed President Joe Biden, but that is not stopping his successor from declaring an “energy emergency” to increase oil drilling. “We will drill, baby, drill,” President Donald Trump said in his inaugural speech in the U.S. Capitol. “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth, and we are going to use it ― we’ll use it. We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top and export American energy all over the world.” Trump, who promised during his campaign to cut gasoline and electricity costs by at least half in his first year in office, Monday night signed an order that directs federal agencies to “identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them” to hasten energy development and transportation, including by weakening processes put in place to protect the environment and endangered species. A separate order makes available vast areas of Alaska for oil and gas drilling. How much Trump’s new actions will increase domestic oil production is unclear.
I’m willing to say in the short-term, not much. It can take years from requesting a permit for a drilling lease to having a productive well in place. This is not likely to drive gas prices down or reduce the price eggs, particularly since Trump has already admitted that he can’t do that.
If he can’t cut prices, why did people vote for him again? Oh yeah, I forgot — Racism and Fear.
Many of his promises are already falling apart.
Did people vote for him to cut migration at the border? (Which has dropped 70% in the last year to levels below when Drumph left office in 2021) So, of course, now he’s sending the Military to the Border — even though they don’t have the training or legal authorization to deal with migrants.
President Trump on Monday night signed an executive order authorizing the U.S. military to draft a plan for sending troops to the southern border. The order authorizes U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), one of 11 combat command centers, to repel “forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities” at the southern border. “Threats against our Nation’s sovereignty continue today, and it is essential that the Armed Forces staunchly continue to participate in the defense of our territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Trump’s executive order reads. “The Armed Forces of the United States have played a long and well-established role in securing our borders against threats of invasion, against unlawful forays by foreign nationals into the United States, and against other transnational criminal activities that violate our laws and threaten the peace, harmony, and tranquility of the Nation.” The Pentagon said in a statement that it was “fully committed to carrying out the orders from our Commander-In-Chief, and is doing so immediately under his leadership.”
Sure, nothing could go awry with that.
He has suspended the Security Clearances of the 51 intelligence officials who signed the Hunter Laptop letter.
President Donald Trump says his administration will move to suspend the security clearances of the more than four dozen former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop saga bore the hallmarks of a “Russian information operation.” [...] The action is an early indication of Trump’s determination to exact retribution on perceived adversaries and is the latest point of tension between Trump and an intelligence community of which he has been openly disdainful. The sweeping move, announced via executive order Monday, also sets up a potential court challenge from ex-officials seeking to maintain access to sensitive government information.
The reason persons such as these retain their clearances is so that they can lend their institutional experience and knowledge to the assessment of intelligence. Specifically, they called out the emails on Hunter’s Laptop as potentially being part of a Russian disinformation effort because the GRU had hacked Burisa.
They warned that this could have been a repeat effort by Russia to “hack and dump” as they had with the DNC and Wikileaks. This is cutting off his nose to prevent Leopards from eating his face.
Secondly, the letter they wrote should be protected under the 1st Amendment and his EO may be legally challenged.
"Laptop letter was properly cleared by CIA prepub review staff not to contain classified info. I handle 1st Amendment matters all the time. Signatories fulfilled their lawful obligations. This EO implicitly threatens CIA staff for doing their job. We'll see what happens," he said. Zaid concluded with a jab at Trump and his transition team and said Trump's order inadvertently opened the door to a legal challenge, even though the Supreme Court has ruled federal judges don't have jurisdiction over substantive clearance decisions. "I thought Trump 2.0 was going to be better organized & prepared than this. They had weeks. But all I see is that many, not all, of Project 2025 & other MAGA loyalists who pushed this idea have little to no understanding of how security clearance process & laws work," Zaid wrote.
To her credit Liz Cheney has clapped back at Trump’s lies, echoing Daniel Dale.
"I was going to talk about the J6 hostages. But, you'll be happy, because, you know, it's action, not words that count. And you're going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages," Trump said about the Capitol rioters he has pledged to pardon or whose sentences he wants to commute. Trump continued, "And I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes. Like the "unselect" committee of political thugs. Where they literally, what they did was, they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings. Practically not a thing left. They deleted all the information on Nancy Pelosi having turned down the offer of 10,000 soldiers...You don't see any photos. But we have a lot of great photos. But you don't see those photographs. They don't show the people at the Capitol. But I was talking about that, I was going to talk about that. They said please don't bring that up right now, you can bring it up tomorrow. I said, how about how? I'll bring it up right now." Trump then lashed out at Cheney herself, who chaired the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. "Why are we helping Liz Cheney? I mean, Liz Cheney is a disaster, she's a crying lunatic...Liz Cheney hated the concept of not going to war with everybody. Let's kill everybody, let's spend a lot of money on military equipment. You know where her father works, right? But what she did was incredible. Think of it, They destroyed and deleted all of that information that went on for almost two years against Trump. And the reason they did was because it was all false." In response to Trump's comments, Cheney posted to social media, "Trump’s remarks in the Capitol Visitor Center today were a reminder that neither lies nor the liar who tells them get better with age. The Select Committee evidence is available on multiple websites and, as a criminal defendant, Donald Trump has had access to all the transcripts for years. Remember Trump’s character: He sat in his dining room watching on television as his supporters attacked our Capitol and brutally assaulted law enforcement. For hours, he refused to instruct the mob to leave. The truth will never change."
The simple truth of Cheney’s statement is clear when you look at the testimony of Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller who stated under oath that he was never given instructions byTrump to have “10,000 Troops” on standby.
It simply didn’t happen and there was never any physical evidence or testimony that it did.
As shown by Jack Smith’s Report, the attempt to overthrow the Electoral Count was based on John Eastman’s 6-point memo, and since Mike Pence refused to implement that plan Trump engaged his Brownshirts and the Proud Boys to implement “1776 Returns” to invade and occupy the building and force Pence to seek safety, allowing Chuck Grassley to implement the Eastman plan. It just didn’t work because Pence refused to leave.
They put all this shit in writing, Pelosi had nothing to do with it.
This was why Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years for Seditious Conspiracy, but now thanks to Trump, he and 1,500 other traitorous terrorists are free.
And what could go wrong with releasing hundreds of unrepentant self-righteous violent terrorists into the wild yet again?
Buckle up everyone, we’re in for a wild bumpy, violent, scary ride.
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