Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Trump attempts to wrest tax and spending powers from Congress with new executive actions

Washington Post logoThe actions aim to temporarily extend unemployment aid and eviction protections

President Trump on Saturday attempted to bypass Congress and make dramatic changes to tax and spending policy, signing executive actions that challenge the boundaries of power that separate the White House and Capitol Hill.

At a news event in Bedminster, N.J., Trump said the actions would provide economic relief to millions of Americans by deferring taxes and, he said, providing temporary unemployment benefits. The measures would attempt to wrest away some of Congress’s most fundamental, constitutionally mandated powers — tax and spending policy. Trump acknowledged that some of the actions could be challenged in court but indicated he would persevere.

Trump bemoaned how Democrats had refused to accept his demands during the recent negotiations but attempted to brush it aside, saying four measures he signed Saturday “will take care of pretty much this entire situation.” Continue reading.

The founders tried to guard against con artist tyrants — but our democratic republic may end anyway

AlterNet logoOur founding fathers were of an era when slavery and colonization were a direct extension of the “t’was ever thus” of history. To fault them for their failures to live by our current standards (by which they fail miserably) is to miss the point.

So too is praising them for their idealism and vision. Though many were Christians, they knew better than to bring that kind of blind-faith optimism to the crafting of our city on the hill.

Their true genius was in expecting of humankind what humankind inevitably delivers, corruption, backsliding and backlashes, the opposite of the dream of woke enlightenment in which everybody finally sees the light, realizing the truth of love, kindness, generosity, justice and liberty for all. Our founding fathers were cynics, not romanticizers of human nature. Continue reading.

Meet the Official Accused of Helping Trump Politicize Homeland Security

New York Times logoChad F. Wolf joined the Department of Homeland Security in its infancy to help prevent another 9/11. Now he is helping President Trump use it to achieve his political ambitions.

WASHINGTON — It took only 24 hours after President Trump attacked New York City in his State of the Union address for the president’s man at the Department of Homeland Security to act.

Chad F. Wolf had joined the department nearly two decades before as a midlevel staff member to help the sprawling new agency gear up to protect Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But in February, as the new acting secretary of homeland security, Mr. Wolf introduced himself to most in the United States by announcing on Fox News that New Yorkers were suspended from enrolling in expedited air traveler programs because their state had barred federal immigration enforcement agencies from gaining access to Department of Motor Vehicle records.

“It’s particularly interesting coming from New York again, from where 9/11 occurred,” Mr. Wolf said in a later appearance on the network. “We want to make sure we share information and not continue to withhold information.” Continue reading.

Attacks On Postal Service Hurt Democracy — And That’s The Point

Donald Trump continues to both demonize the idea of vote by mail and dismantle the U.S. Postal Service, and it’s making a predictable mess. The House Oversight and Reform Committee is calling new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to testify about changes to the Postal Service, but they’re letting that testimony wait until September 17, because apparently this isn’t super urgent, even though “While these changes in a normal year would be drastic, in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner—an unacceptable outcome for a free and fair election,” as committee Chair Carolyn Maloney wrote to DeJoy.

But while the concrete damage Trump is doing to the on-time delivery of mail in this country is a disaster, the effects of his constant ranting against mail voting on his fellow Republicans are kind of hilarious. Because the thing is, more Republicans than Democrats traditionally mail in their ballots … or did, until Trump went to work.

Local Republican Party organizations and officials are desperately trying to reassure their voters that it’s okay to vote by mail. Continue reading.

Trump stuns observers by openly soliciting payment to US Treasury for his ‘approval’ of TikTok sale

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump says he is allowing Microsoft to purchase the U.S. assets of the popular Beijing-based TikTok social media video sharing app, in a sale Trump personally is forcing.

In discussing what he sees as the broad portions of an agreement the President used a real estate term to openly solicit the payment that would have to be made to the U.S. Treasury.

“I said a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the U.S. Treasury of the United States, because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen,” Trump told reporters Monday afternoon. Continue reading.

Tyranny expert explains how Donald Trump has ‘ceded the election’ but is creating a crisis to ‘cling to power’

AlterNet logoThis week, as the economy revealed that the U.S. GDP cratered, President Donald Trump teased putting a hold on the November election. While it is unclear if the president was attempting to distract from the economy in freefall or his falling poll numbers.

Historian and expert on authoritarian regimes, Professor Timothy Snyder, authored of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, describing the key ways to spot authoritarianism.

“Do we have any reason to believe that Mr. Trump would accept the outcome of the election?” asked the Yale professor. “The tweet of July 30th was a very clear statement, but he has literally, dozens of times before said he wouldn’t. There is nothing in his career that indicates he actually likes democracy. In this particular tweet, we have a dangerous mixture, where he’s talking about a problem he created himself, insofar as we do have problems with voting in the U.S. They have to do with things like African-Americans not being enfranchised, they have to do with the things of foreign intervention. And even the problems he mentioned, which is postal voting, which is good and of itself, that might be slowed down because of his own postmaster general. So, he’s talking about problems he caused himself, then claiming they’re an emergency, and using that as a reason to claim power himself. That’s a manufactured emergency and that is, in fact, a prime historical fascist tactic.” Continue reading.

DHS analyzed protester communications, raising questions about previous statements by senior department official

Washington Post logoA senior Department of Homeland Security official told a Senate committee earlier this month that the department had not collected, exploited or analyzed information from the electronic devices or accounts of protesters in Portland, Ore.

But an internal DHS document obtained by The Washington Post shows the department did have access to protesters’ electronic messages and that their conversations were written up in an “intelligence report” that was disseminated to federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, as well as state and local governments.

In a letter sent Friday, Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Brian Murphy, acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, about statements he made to committee staff on July 23 regarding the department’s intelligence activities in Portland. Continue reading.

Barr Makes It Official—He’s Trump’s New “Fixer”

If and when the attorney general leaves, the Department of Justice faces a reckoning.

Of President Donald Trump’s many career skills, perhaps the least appreciated is his lifelong and uncanny ability to sniff out lawyers who will serve his will.

In slightly more than 500 days in office, Attorney General William Barr has pivoted from establishment D.C. attorney—sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States—into Trump’s family lawyer. The office of the attorney general is one of the oldest in our constitutional system, and the department is pledged “to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” But Barr, instead, displays a tendency to use all the department’s levers—and with a $32 billion budget there are a lot of them—not to protect “all Americans” but to protect the president, personally and politically.

Is Election Day set by law? “I’ve never looked into it,” Barr demurred in his testimony this week. Is it appropriate for the president to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election? Barr’s first answer: “It depends what kind of assistance.” These are the answers of a man who has turned the once-proud Department of Justice into the president’s personal law firm. That is contrary to every tradition of the Justice Department, but consistent with how Trump has operated for his entire professional life. Continue reading. Continue reading.

DHS official whose office compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists and protesters has been removed from his job

Washington Post logoA senior Department of Homeland Security official whose office compiled “intelligence reports” about journalists and protesters in Portland, Ore., has been removed from his job, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Brian Murphy, the acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, was reassigned to a new position elsewhere in the department, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.

Acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf made the decision on Friday, one person said. Continue reading.

More Than Just a Tweet: Trump’s Campaign to Undercut Democracy

New York Times logoFloating the idea of delaying the election was the latest step in the president’s running effort to discredit the election, risking long-term damage to public trust in the system.

Nothing in the Constitution gives President Trump the power to delay the November election, and even fellow Republicans dismissed it out of hand when he broached it on Thursday. But that was not the point. With a possible defeat looming, the point was to tell Americans that they should not trust their own democracy.

The idea of putting off the vote was the culmination of months of discrediting an election that polls suggest Mr. Trump is currently losing by a wide margin. He has repeatedly predicted “RIGGED ELECTIONS” and a “substantially fraudulent” vote and “the most corrupt election in the history of our country,” all based on false, unfounded or exaggerated claims.

It is the kind of language resonant of conspiracy theorists, cranks and defeated candidates, not an incumbent living in the White House. Never before has a sitting president of the United States sought to undermine public faith in the election system the way Mr. Trump has. He has refused to commit to respecting the results and, even after his election-delay trial balloon was panned by Republican allies, he raised the specter on Thursday evening of months of lawsuits challenging the outcome. Continue reading.