You Know Who Continues the Dismantling of Our Government, Making It In His Own Image...
It surely appears as though you know who is planning on selling out the United States of America to his buddy in the Kremlin. Hopefully the Senate has retained enough common sense and loyalty to THIS Nation and its security the Gabbard gift to the Kremlin will be shot down just as it should.
You know who is proving once again that he is imminently unqualified for dog catcher, let alone any higher office.
Democratic lawmakers are slamming Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, saying their former House colleague is a vocal supporter of Russia who poses a threat to US national intelligence.
Jason Crow, a House Democrat from Colorado and a member of the House intelligence committee, told NBC News that he has “deep questions about where her loyalties lie”.
“We get a lot of intelligence from our allies, and there I would be worried about a chilling effect,” he said.
Related: Two Trump cabinet choices in jeopardy over sexual misconduct allegations
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a House Democrat from Florida, told MSNBC on Friday: “There’s no question I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset.”
Abigail Spanberger, another House Democrat on the intelligence committee and a former CIA case officer, said on X that she is “appalled” by Gabbard’s nomination.
“Someone who has aligned herself with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad and trafficked in Russian-backed conspiracy theories is an unsuitable and potentially dangerous selection,” Spanberger wrote. “The objections to her nomination transcend partisan politics. This is a matter of national security.”
Gabbard is just the latest of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks to garner alarm over her nomination. Questions and criticism have been raised by members of both parties over the qualification of other Trump nominees, including representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services and Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.
It’s unclear whether all of Trump’s nominees will be able to get through a Senate confirmation, even with the chamber’s Republican majority.
Moderate Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have voiced reservations about nominees like Gaetz, who Murkowski said is not “a serious nomination”. Former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy similarly said that “Gaetz won’t get confirmed”.
“Everybody knows that,” he told Bloomberg.
Gabbard was a Democratic representative from Hawaii from 2013 to 2021 and was the first Samoan and Hindu elected to Congress. She served in the military in Iraq and was once a surrogate for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 primary campaign.
She has since become a contributor on Fox News and said that she quit the Democratic party, which she said is run by an “elitist cabal of warmongers”. Gabbard has been a staunch critic of US foreign policy. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard accused the US of running biological weapon laboratories in Ukraine – a falsehood often touted by Russia.
Michael Waldman, president of the Brenna Center for Justice, told the New York Times on Wednesday that Trump’s cabinet nominations “seem designed to poke the Senate in the eyes”.
“They’re so appalling they’re a form of performance art,” he said.
Trump will inherit the strongest economy in 50 years. Project 2025 could destroy it.
President-elect Donald Trump will inherit what I consider the strongest domestic economy in 50 years. Job growth, wage growth and GDP growth are all strong, and inflation has returned to its normal plodding path. We could be in the midst of a long expansion.
It is not hard to gauge the policy choices Trump will prefer. Project 2025, of which I’ve written, will tell us what we need to know about economic and fiscal policy. It is a detailed road map and will animate much of what happens in the executive branch over the coming years. Much, but not all, of Project 2025 will require compliance in the House and Senate. That seems unlikely, at least until the next election.
Project 2025 tells us to expect a big expansion in political appointees to civil service, from 4,000 to 20,000, which appears to be possible without the support of Congress. With that, we’ll see efforts to pressure states to expand universal school vouchers, reduce environmental regulation and expand energy production on federal lands.
Much of this won’t come to pass, because it falls to the purview of state governments or will be tied up in courts for years. Like these changes or not, don’t expect them all in four years.
This, of course, depends upon the next administration’s compliance with the Constitution, a dubious proposition to be sure.
Trump can't carry out Project 2025 alone
Project 2025 also contains varied proposals that would reverse benefits to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, restrict access to abortion-related medications, abolish the Department of Education and link federal classroom funding to schools that follow approved curriculum.
Almost all of Project 2025 builds a bigger, more expansive and intrusive federal government. Most of it comes from legislation to expand socially conservative ideas, using the strong arm of government. We should expect much more of that from this administration.
The U.S. economy won’t be much affected by the slow changes to these sorts of policies and the tough political fights they entail. Nothing in Project 2025 wrestles with the real fiscal challenges – debt, taxes and entitlement spending. Nor does Trump have a plan to deal with public debt. As with his first term, we should expect public debt to grow substantially in his second.
There’s also been a flurry of statements on the campaign trail that offer more immediate risk to the economy. Trump has spoken disapprovingly of an independent Federal Reserve. That would take a compliant Congress, which he won’t have, but the appointment of a different Board of Governors and chairman could vastly reduce its independence.
Trump's plans for deportation, the economy will cost Americans
Trump has promised the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration in the United States is down from its 2007 high of 12.2 million persons to about 11 million today. Absent misleading claims, the challenge of illegal immigration is lessening over time.
The costs of deportation are huge. Bus and rail costs for voluntary deportation would run well over $50 billion and take well over a year. We simply don’t have the buses in the United States to move 11 million people to, say, Mexico in a year. Moreover, the cost of mobilizing tens of thousands of National Guard troops to aid in deportation would be well over a half-trillion dollars.
Deportation and mobilization would also remove millions of workers from an economy already starved for workers. This would spike the deficit, because undocumented immigrants pay much more in taxes than they receive in services. It would also slow economic growth.
On this issue, expect much of what Trump has shown a propensity for – bold claims and little action.
Trump has also claimed he would expand tariffs, perhaps dramatically. Here, Congress has given the president enormous latitude in setting tariffs for national security claims. Presidents from both parties have abused this power, so Trump will be able to levy virtually whatever tariff he wishes, on whomever he wishes.
The tariffs are purportedly designed to increase U.S. manufacturing employment. One key problem with that claim is that there’s overwhelming evidence that tariffs reduce domestic factory employment. Indeed, Trump’s 2018 tariffs pushed the Midwest – whose factories were especially susceptible to tariffs – into the brink of recession in 2019.
Article Continues BELOW the FOLD
Comments
Post a Comment