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Good Job, Trump Supporters! - January 2025 Recap Part I [1]
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Date: 2025-02-06
*As you’re probably well aware, January brought too much Project 2025 insanity to even mentally process on a daily basis, let alone catalog in detail. Even after glossing over a lot of truly important stories, this was still so long that I was still forced to break it into three parts just to keep it readable. While I doubt President Mump will be able to maintain this level of intensity and chaos for four years, trying to keep up has taken a toll on my other writing, not to mention my mental health.
As such, this three-parter will be the last entry of “Good Job, Trump Supporters” in this format so I can focus on more important topics than detailing the depravity of madmen. Instead, I plan to start a sarcastic running list of “All the Ways Trump Has Made America Great” and otherwise return to only writing about the president tangentially. If you want a detailed overview of what this administration has done and is planning to do, you can still download a copy of Project 2025 for free. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this. And now, on with the show
Republicans have made great strides by being so blatantly horrible that accurately describing their behavior sounds like hyperbole. - From “The Alt-Right Playbook”
January 6 Pardons
Trump pardoned nearly all of the convicted January 6 attackers, including those convicted of violently attacking police officers. After years of lying about foreign nations emptying prisons and filling America’s streets with violent criminals, Trump became the first to actually do so. Those who would commit violence on his behalf now know they can do so without consequence, which is to say, Trump now has a dispersed private army. As Jonathan Chait writes, “lawbreaking in the service of subverting elections in Trump’s favor will be tolerated.”
Ali Breland writes, “Radical militias are free to act with impunity—as long as they’re loyal to Trump. Should an extremist on the right break the law, he can reasonably hope for Trump to pluck him out of the justice system. This is one of the key ingredients to the perpetuation of political violence across society—a belief among those who might carry it out that they can do so, and that they’ll get away with it…Now, after the pardons, right-wing extremists no longer have to hide.”
The nation’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, condemned the pardons, despite endorsing Trump when promised to do exactly what he did on the campaign trail. As a reminder, these so-called hostages “threw Nazi salutes, posted that they intended to start a civil war, vowed ‘there will be blood,’ and called for the lynching of Democratic lawmakers. These men, who attacked police with bear spray, flag poles, and a metal whip and choked officers with their bare hands, are now back on the streets.” He also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of an online drug marketplace linked to at least six overdose deaths, to boost his cred among libertarians and crypto-bros.
Birthright Citizenship
Trump issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship even though it is firmly enshrined in the 14th Amendment. A federal judge has already blocked the order as unconstitutional, and it won’t hold up in court, but the attempt reveals three important things: 1) Trump has no intention of defending the Constitution as he swore to do on Inauguration Day. 2) Trump’s immigration plans are in no way limited to criminals or even people here illegally; it’s white nationalism all the way down. 3) Trump is not bound by law; he will attempt anything, and what he can get away with is limited only by whether or not someone will stop him.
More-Expensive Medicine
Trump rescinded Biden’s initiative to lower prescription drugs costs through government negotiation, predictably putting Big Pharma profits before the health and survival of the people who voted for him. “With the stroke of his pen, Trump removed a $2 price cap on certain generic drugs, did away with a provision that would improve access to high-cost therapies for Medicaid recipients, and ended an effort to expedite the evidence-gathering process for new drugs. Put another way, President Trump just opened the door for drug prices to skyrocket…It’s as plain as day: President Trump did away with these cost-saving plans so that his friends in the pharmaceutical industry could profit.”
Trump rescinded 78 Biden Executive orders in total on his first day. “The targeted actions were aimed at advancing racial equity, combating gender discrimination, addressing climate change, mobilizing the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, adding ethics requirements for political appointees, addressing the root causes of migration, lowering prescription drug costs, imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank,” and others.
Here are other executive orders I have no time to cover. Also here.
TikTok
Trump halted the bipartisan TikTok ban. Even though he was largely responsible for initiating the ban in the first place, once he saw how the app could benefit him personally, he predictably changed course. When he was asked about the threats to the security of Americans’ data, he essential asserted that it’s okay if China spies on TikTok users and collects their data, because after all they’re only our children. For what it’s worth, shutting down TikTok to protect Americans’ privacy is like trying to end the obesity epidemic by shutting down Taco Bell, but the hypocrisy is worth noting.
Foreign Aid
Trump put a 90-day pause on all foreign aid, except that to Egypt and Israel (those Palestinian children aren’t going to bomb themselves). Heather Cox Richardson writes of the pause on foreign aid: “International aid groups that depend on U.S. funding appeared shocked. ‘The recent stop-work cable from the State Department suspends programs that support America's global leadership and creates dangerous vacuums that China and our adversaries will quickly fill,’ said InterAction, the largest alliance of international aid organizations. ‘This halt interrupts critical life-saving work including clean water to infants, basic education for kids, ending the trafficking of girls, and providing medications to children and others suffering from disease. It stops assistance in countries critical to U.S. interests, including Taiwan, Syria, and Pakistan. And, it halts decades of life-saving work through PEPFAR [the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a global health program started by President George W. Bush] that helps babies to be born HIV-free.’”
Facing backlash, Trump announced that “lifesaving” humanitarian efforts could continue but didn’t actually reverse the stop-work orders or release the funding. As with so much else Trump is doing, this will provide an excellent opportunity for China to assume the global leadership role the U.S. has now abandoned. More details on the needless suffering this order is causing from ProPublica.
Gaza
Trump suggested that Egypt and Jordan take in all 2 million displaced Gazans, vacating the strip. I originally assumed this was so Israel could annex and colonize it; I should have guessed it was so he could turn it into a resort.
He also eliminated Biden’s order to prevent 2,000 pound bombs from being shipped to Israel, which will come in handy as Netanyahu pivots his genocide from Gaza to the West Bank.
Screwing the Poor
The Trump agenda in a single headline: To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Floats Plan to Slash Benefits for the Poor and Working Class.
The Washington Post analyzed the ways Republicans are considering slashing government spending to cover the $5 trillion cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. As you might have guessed, they amount to increasing prices for consumers through tariffs, repealing clean energy programs, cutting veterans’ healthcare benefits, cutting food stamps, restricting Medicaid and Medicare benefits, eliminating the Department of Education, and cutting IRS funding (even though that would actually increase the deficit). The theme of the next four years is, repeat after me, Bleed the Poor to Feed the Rich. For reasons I’ll go into another time, this will in no way reduce Trump’s support among those he’s actively and overtly exploiting for profit. Sheep adore their shepherd even as he marches them to the slaughterhouse.
A Few More Executive Orders
It’s worth noting that no major legislation has been passed since Trump took office. Everything he has done has been via executive order, like the dictator he aspires to be. It’s only working because the Republican Congress and Supreme Court are in his pocket and refuse to assert their authority has coequal branches of government. Hopefully they’ll eventually realize that in their obsequiousness they are making themselves irrelevant; they may want to stand up to Trump before he realizes he doesn’t need them.
Anyhow, Trump has ordered that the U.S. withdraw from the World Health Organization, fact-based reality always being the biggest threat to an authoritarian’s alternative truth. He also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords, a status shared only with Iran, Libya, and Yemen. He also removed regulations on the oil and gas industry and called for more drilling. (The U.S. is currently the world’s biggest oil producer.) After declaring an “energy emergency,” Trump also halted leases for wind energy projects.
Transphobia
Trump reinstated a ban on transgender persons serving in the military, and further issued an executive order to halt gender transition for people 18 and under, which shouldn’t matter because that’s not how laws are made in a democracy, but across the country leaders at all levels are falling over themselves to obey in advance, so it may stick.
Trump also issued an executive order declaring that the U.S. government will now only recognize two genders. Due to his administration’s ignorance of reproductive science, the order was written in a way that defines everyone as female, making Trump himself the first female president. He has since also issued an order banning transgender girls and women from playing in men’s sports. Again, this is not under the purview of the federal government, but I’m sure many schools, coaches, and leagues will comply regardless.
As Adam Serwer of The Atlantic sagely points out, “The damage wrought by legitimizing this form of discrimination will not be limited to the trans community. Laws and legal rulings that undermine trans rights may soon be used to restrict the rights of other, less marginal groups. Anyone naïve enough to think that the government can deny fundamental rights to one group without putting another’s at risk is in for some nasty surprises.”
Attacks on the Civil Service
Trump issued an executive order to allow himself to replace nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists to remove another source of resistance to his dictatorial ambitions. He also fired 15 independent inspector generals across government departments. These are the people tasked with rooting out corruption and fraud in government. And he ordered that his appointees be granted high-level security clearances without background checks. He has since also issued buy-out offers to encourage federal employees to quit and otherwise sewn chaos across the federal bureaucracy. The swamp should be drained any day now…
That seems like more than enough for now. I plan to post Part II tomorrow. If you like my work, please consider subscribing to my Substack newsletter at hopeanyway.substack.com. Thanks for reading!
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