The fear of violence is justified. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene received  incited death threats against her and her son when she turned against Trump.Over a dozen Indiana state lawmakers who refused Trump’s request to gerrymander for more Republican seats were targeted with bomb threats.

Republicans have been swatted by Trump zealots. Swatting’s a type of harassment by falsely reporting emergencies to rush police to a person’s home. It can cause long-term damage to children’s emotional and physical health and can lead to long-term nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, emotional distress, terror and trauma. It can also turned deadly. 

The correlation between Trump’s constant invective and violence against non-accommodating Republicans is undeniable. ABC News identified over 50 criminal cases where individuals explicitly identified Trump as the reason for violent threats. 

After the January 6 Capitol riot, Republicans who criticized Trump for the rampage expressed fear for their lives.” 

A Reuters investigation identified over 30 Republican officials who faced threats tied to their refusal to support overturning the 2020 election.

Liz Cheney was the victim of repeated death threats after turning against Trump. 

Adam Kinzinger received threatening voicemails that warned: “Gonna get your wife… gonna get your kids” and “We know where your family is.”

The Raffensberger family received death threats after Trump’s surprise loss in Georgia.

Republicans’ most pernicious surrender to Trump-incited threats was their  confirmation of the most flagrantly unqualified and dangerous cabinet in America’s history. They risked Americans’ health, turned the Department of Justice and FBI into Trump’s private gestapo, removed rational thought from the decision to attack other countries and debilitated our national security. 

It’s doubtful that the threat of loosing their seats was responsible for confirming a troop of grossly unfit sycophants, especially because sitting Republicans are more likely to lose their seats to a Trump-backed primary challenger or a Democrat. But the decision becomes more difficult when one’s family is threatened.

So how can dissenting Republicans effectively oppose Trump and neutralize the threats he rouses?

Most states make threats of harm a crime punishable by jail . Victims should notify state law enforcement officials with details of threats. They  can track digital threats and subpoena records from social media platforms and Gmail logs, including IP addresses, account activity and can often identify the offender. Calls and texts can also be traced through carriers. Then Republicans can be untethered to Trump.

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The post REPUBLICANS ARE MORE AFRAID OF VIOLENT ATTACKS THAN LOOSING THEIR SEATS TO A TRUMP-BACKED CHALLENGER first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Republicans safeguarded the continued existence of the United States before during and after the Civil War. It’s Congressional majority passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and it strengthened post-civil war America by promoting industrial expansion and free labor. Those policies together with Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s leadership pulled America through a crisis that threatened its survival. 

We’re in a different crisis now and need those kinds of Republicans, even if it takes impeachment; although there are less extreme measures.

All Presidents sought Congressional Declarations of war or Authorizations for Use of Military Force before they attacked another country. Trump did neither. 

Nor did he let Congress know what he was about to do. In fact, it wasn’t Trump, it was Benjaman Netanyahu who decided we should bomb Iran. Trump complied without input from Congress or consulting with or informing our European, Asian and  Persian Gulf allies, all of whom spurned Trump’s plea for help in liberating the Strait of Hormuz. 

Yet Trump’s obedient Republicans tolerated all of it, including letting a foreign leader launch the Iran war, and Trump’s brazen contempt for the Constitution. Worse, they enabled Trump’s bombing by confirming the most corrupt, sycophantic, dangerous and unqualified cabinet in America’s history. 

The key components of every President’s cabinet are expertise, competence, experience, high ethical standards, the ability to challenge the president without repercussions and bipartisanship that’s solved the most contentious issues for more than two centuries but is sorely lacking today. Sadly, sitting Republicans confirmed a cabinet that fails dismally on every count.

Republican President Lincoln’s cabinet was intentionally bipartisan, representing different views on slavery. It helped Lincoln unite a fractured nation, and played key roles in the Union’s Civil War victory and the abolition of slavery. 

There’s an enormous amount of damage that needs to be undone and catastrophes that need to be prevented.  Non-Trump Republicans need to:

• Restore the FBI unit that tracks threats from Iran and that Kash Patel gutted days before Trump bombed Iran. 
• Prevent Trump from sending ground troops to Iran that could require the scale of troops in Vietnam and be to Iran’s advantage. Rugged mountains make up half of Iran. Its urban centers are inland and protected by the mountains and uninhabitable deserts.  
• Repeal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid Republicans passed as part of Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut that replaced lost revenues with cuts to both safety nets. 
• Narrow our shamefully wide wealth spread. Republicans’ $4.5 trillion tax cut will make it wider.
• Revive USAID which Trump shuttered. A year later, more than 762,000 people relying on medical aid died including more than 500,000 children.  Other crucial defense and economic benefits are now in jeopardy.
• Restore the  guardrails against corruption abolished by Trump . He then built his net worth from $4.3 billion to $7.3 billion, often ignoring bipartisan opposition to his actions. 
• Stem the threat to the dollar’s supremacy triggered by fiscal irresponsibility. Large countries have set up trade relationships using other currencies. The dollars share of reserve currencies is at a two-decade low. 
• Rebuild America’s ability to prepare for disasters hobbled by Trump that could have saved most – maybe all – of the 120 people killed in Kerr County, Texas.
• Restore budget cuts and reduce hostility towards immigrants that’s sent our best scientists and researchers to China. 
• Impeach and replace Trump’s cabinet of the most unqualified dangerous sycophants in the country’s history by not confirming Trump’s picks until he’s gone.
• Restore the two Democrats Trump fired from the NLRB to replace them with sycophants so it could no longer protect workers rights by not confirming his picks for replacements to any agency where Trump intends to replace members with sycophants until he’s gone.

There are less extreme measures than impeachment. But what demands impeachment is an honest look at Trump’s decisions to aggrandize his power and image instead of benefitting Americans, and his immorality and dishonesty. 

Consider his latest betrayal. Trump told us he’s bombing Iran to achieve regime change, then switched his reason to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Both were lies. He had already accomplished the latter by his last attack. His real reasons for the bombing and killing thousands were to distract from the Epstein scandal and his punishing economy, for leverage to declare an emergency as an excuse to deploy American troops on U.S. soil, to delay the midterm elections and prove he can do anything he wants. 

He also told us he was shocked when Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz – also a lie. Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned him that an attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials long-believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the world’s most vital shipping lane, and Trump acknowledged the risk. 

His press secretary claimed “The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz … well before Operation Epic Fury …” 

Perhaps the most difficult challenge to a new Congress is to recapture the honor, trust and respect that sitting Republicans allowed Trump to diminish a respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.

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The post REPUBLICANS CAN FIX OUR COUNTRY first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Although injunctions don’t matter to Trump or his enslaved Republicans, these injunctions will matter to the individual ICE agents, members of the military, and other Trump operatives who attempt to deprive voters of the right to vote as they choose. 

It will matter because, specifically, if any individual violates the injunction, they can personally be held in civil or criminal contempt and suffer fines and jail time. Those consequences would provide the strongest disincentive to obey any order to intimidate voters. 

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and  The Rules for Courts-Martial  an order is unlawful, “if it is contrary to the Constitution or the laws of the United States.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of federal troops for domestic law enforcement other than in the case of an insurrection.

So, if Trump issued an unconstitutional or unlawful order, the members of the military would be legally obligated to disobey it or be subject to fines and incarceration. 

Even without an injunction, individuals are legally obligated to disobey any command to commit illegal acts or else they’d be personally subject to civil liability and incarceration. 

Trump would probably pardon the ICE agents and other offenders for federal crimes but cannot pardon for state crimes, void civil liability or stop Congressional investigations. Nevertheless, Trump’s roll in ordering the intimidation is likely to be its own crime, and could be the basis for criminal prosecution after he leaves office.

Although the law gives the Attorney General the authority to bring the proceeding for an injunction, it is beyond unlikely that Pam Bondi would do so. Nevertheless, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 creates a way for citizens to bring a civil action  to seek injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages against the individuals that deprived voters the right to vote as they choose. 

There are plenty of grounds to believe that Trump will employ ICE agents and the military to engage in such attempts. First, there are the undeserved horrors ICE has inflicted on immigrants and citizens alike, sweeping them off the streets in Gestapo-like fashion and sending them to the most brutal prison in the Western Hemisphere. 

Trump has openly discussed using the military to quell domestic demonstrations, which he labels as chaos, and declaring a national emergency so he can bring in the troops. 

To facilitate intimidating voters, Trump is pressing Republicans from states across the country to give him their voter rolls,  Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened Minnesota Governor Walz that if he wanted a ICE to back off he must give Trump access to his state’s voter rolls, and Bondi has initiated more than 20 legal actions to get them.

Trump obtained a magistrate’s warrant to seize voting records in Georgia, ostensively to prove he won the 2020 election. Many legal experts worry that he’ll use the seizure as precedent to obtain a similar warrant to seize voting machines and midterm ballots before they’re counted. 

Trump may pressure his Republican allies to refuse to seat Democratic winners claiming there are disputes about the results. California, with 54 electoral votes, could be particularly vulnerable, since it takes so long for the state to tally its votes. It’s happened before in a closely contested race.

Trump could repeat his deployment of supporters, pardoned Oath keepers and Proud Boys to stage another Jan. 6 attack on Congress.  

As always, only the Republicans can stop Trump’s treacheries. Whether he rigs the midterms depends on whether they’ll sacrifice their constituents to avoid facing a Trump-backed challenger in the primaries.  

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The post DEMOCRATS CAN STOP TRUMP FROM RIGGING THE MIDTERMS first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Although there have been only two outbreaks, and none in the US, Nipah is considered a public health threat because of its high fatality rate, potential for human-to-human transmission and the absence of approved vaccines or treatment. 

So how would Donald Trump come to our rescue if it or when, not if, any pandemic hits the U.S. again? The answer is poorly given his brutal cuts to medical research and his dismal Covid-19 performance. 

Trump recently announced  cuts of $4 billion in medical research funding at universities, hospitals, and other scientific institutions. Researchers have had to drop crucial projects and many consider switching fields due to Trump’s cuts and layoffs. The cutscanceled 383 clinical trials affecting research into COVID-19,  cancer prevention and heart and brain disease. 

Not to mention that Trump has sent our best medical scientists to China, weakening our ability to fend off pandemics and rapidly propelling China’s medical advancement beyond ours. The assault on our health will continue until Congressional Republicans find the integrity and courage to stop him. 

Trumps ruinous actions and failure to stop the Covid pandemic during his first presidency is alarmingly similar to what he’s doing today. At the end of his first administration, America had 4.2% of  the world’s population, 25% of Covid cases and 19% of Covid deaths. Shamefully, he abandoned over seven decades in which America played the leading global role in fighting infectious diseases, including Ebola, tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, AIDS, avian influenza and Zika. It was an unconscionable abdication of responsibility. He ignored the Defense Production Act, which gives the president the responsibility to force production and distribution of materials needed to arrest a pandemic. 

In 2014, President Obama coordinated world leaders to stop the Ebola virus at its source, sending more than 3,000 health officials to West Africa as part of a 10,000 team. Cases fell by 80% from peak levels. He also led the fight against Ebola at home, resulting in just 11 cases and two deaths in the United States. 

In sharp contrast, Trump abdicated his responsibility to the states, telling governors they’re on their own to find the critical equipment needed to fight the Covid, admonishing them that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.” 

Having failed to control the spread of COVID, Trump turned to massive misinformation and  blamed  Obama, governors, Democrats, the media and, most bizarrely, the World Health Organization, from which he recently withdrew.

Trump predicted the mortality rate “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero” and would “disappear like a miracle” and that everybody “infected is getting better.” His BS led Americans to abandon caution and suffer more infections and death. 

This man checks all the boxes that medical professionals use to diagnose a sociopath. Whether his claims are lies or delusions doesn’t matter. Either way, he is out of control. Why the hell do we keep him as our President? 

Although Trump can’t help himself, the Republicans in Congress know exactly what they’re doing. They can stop the carnage, but they don’t because the value their Congressional and anatomical seats above their constituents and the country at large. So their complicity will be repeated when, not if, the next pandemic hits. 

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The post 2 NEW FATAL VIRUS CASES DISCOVERED WHILE TRUMP CUTS MEDICAL RESEARCH first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has equated opposition by state leaders and demonstrations with domestic terrorism and insurrection.

ICE’s budget tripled and its force doubled  in 2025 and will double again in 2026. There’s little doubt that Trump pardoned and recruited the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to carry out ICE executions. Who else would willingly and handily execute innocent Americans? They will continue to kill without cause.  

Martial law means the suspension of rights, lower bars for arrests, curfews, checkpoints, restricted travel and surveillance of anybody Trump and odious Stephen Miller want to know more about. Make no mistake, both of them are basking in the chaos and savoring the outcome. Don’t default to an oh-that-will-never-happen safe harbor. Aren’t you closer that you ever thought you’d be? 

The law prohibits bringing in the military and its consequences. But, tragically, we can’t rely on the Supreme Court’s Trump-favoring majority to stop him.

Even more unlikely is that Trump will act rationally – that’s because he’s emotionally unable of being rational. He checks all the boxes that mental health professionals use to diagnose a sociopath: He’s incapable of experiencing guilt, shame, remorse, or empathy. He exhibits aggressive behavior and verbally attacks his critics and won’t admit mistakes. He intimidates and threatens to maintain control, disregards rules and laws, has difficulty controlling impulses, acts without considering the consequences and his dreams are his realities and frequently nightmares for others.

So how do we stop the carnage? We can’t count on the Republicans that Trump has enslaved. There are however solutions. Voters could replace Trump-enslaved Republicans with Republicans not tethered to him in primaries. Democrats can help here. 24 states allow them to vote in Republican primaries.  Democrats can threaten sitting Republican seats more than Trump by threatening to vote for non-Trump primary candidates (and still vote for Democrats in national elections). If sitting Republicans feel the way the wind blows, they’ll seriously consider leaving Trump’s ship.

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The post DON’T RULE OUT MARTIAL LAW. WE’RE CLOSER THAN ANYONE THOUGHT  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

An ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old poet and mother of three because, according to Trump, she was “disrespectful to law enforcement.” Watch an ICE agent shoots and permanently blind a 21-year protester.

It’s more than likely that ICE hired many of the 1500 January 6 criminals, like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Who else would be capable of such cruelty? Oh. I guess Republicans are because they choose not to stop it.

Republicans “Big Beautiful Bill” widens the wealth gap to a record and takes money from Medicare and Medicaid to replace the trillions lost from their $4.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest.

Trump cut 90% of foreign aid that prevented fatal diseases while HIV and tuberculosis spread unchecked across the globe. So what if 14 million die. At least Republicans won’t face Trump-backed primary challengers.

No American President ever corruptly enriched themselves. Then along came the Republicans and Trump who built his net worth from $4.3 billion in 2024 to over $7.3 billion in 2025.

If you’re convicted of perjury, tax or bank fraud, election finance crimes, an insurrection, lying to the FBI, rigging an election with foreign help or impeding a Congressional investigation, Trump will pardon you. He pardoned nearly 1,500 individuals charged with offenses at the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, many of whom had been convicted of violent crimes. Now they are probably employed by ICE. Congress could impeach him if the Republicans would keep their Constitutional oaths to their constituents and the country.

Trump didn’t like Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) weak Jobs Report, so he fired the head of the BLS and released his own data. Reliable data have made of our financial markets the world’s the most reliable. Unreliable data will send them into free fall. Only the Republicans can stop him and sustain global confidence in our markets. But protecting Republican seats is more important to them.

Given the Republicans mission to cut Medicaid and Medicare and Trump’s obsession to undo everything Obama accomplished, Republicans will let Obamacare subsidies expire and healthcare premiums will jump from $888 to $1,904 in 2026.

Trump threatens to cut billions in medical research for cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes and has gutted key parts of the Department of Health and National Institute of Health. Republicans won’t oppose the move. I guess they’re more worried about losing their seats than a family member from a disease that could have been prevented.

Trump is paving the way for Putin to invade NATO members. He’s threatened to stop most military aid to Ukraine unless Zalenski agrees to Putin’s outrageous demands including:

• No promise that Russia won’t invade NATO members.
• NATO won’t expand its membership.
• Ukraine won’t join NATO
• European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland where they’ll be easy targets for the Russian military.

• Crimea and Donbas will be recognized as Russian,
• Ukraine to hold elections enabling Putin to install a puppet government and
• Western military aid to Kyiv will be halted during a 30-day cease fire, making it open season on Ukraine.

As former US Secretaries of State and Defense, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates warned, “ If … Ukraine is defeated, Russia will almost certainly … attack NATO member countries.”

Probably most disastrous, is that Senate Republicans approved Trump’s cabinet picks who are the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet members in American history. They are threats to America’s health, security, governance, global trust, trade relations, economy and we’ve become an international laughing stock and hated at the same time.

Impeachment may be a drastic step, but it is a necessary one. Allowing the Republicans to continue to enable Trump’s treacheries is knowing homicide. Impeachment is the only meaningful way to repair the damage Trump’s wreaked and to restore the honor, trust and respect that Republicans helped Trump strip away from our country by reducing a once respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and increasingly shunned.

The solution: Replace the Trump-enslaved Republicans with Democrats or with Republicans that are not beholden to him. Then we can get back to the bipartisan politics that solved our problems for centuries.

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The post REMEMBER WHEN AMERICA WAS RESPECTED, ENVIED AND TRUSTED? first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Although workers in 19 states have received  an increase in their minimum wage to $15 per hour while the rest of Americans will work for a federal minimum wage of $7.25, the increases are not enough to cover middle and low income earners’ basic expenses. Prices projected to keep rising include beef, coffee, eggs, dairy and sugar.

Trump has put Stephen Miran, a close advisor of Trump, on the Fed’s board of governors. Shocking, Miran will stays in the administration as a Trump advisor while he’s a mole on the board for the President.  Trump is also trying to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden-appointed governor, claiming that she’s committed mortgage fraud, but the Supreme stopped him until it hears the case.

And if Trump’s compliant Supreme Court majority allows him to replace Cook, he’ll hold a majority on the Fed. Then Trump won’t need to pressure anyone – he’ll make interest rate decisions himself, and inflation is sure to follow. It always has when leaders exercise control over their central banks.

President Richard Nixon pressured Fed Chair Arthur Burns to keep interest rates low going into the 1972 presidential election. The Fed succumbed, the economy had a spurt, and Nixon got reelected. Predictably, four years after his presidency, inflation rates hit 15%, and the dollar lost 12 percent of its value.

It took painful interest-rate increases under new Fed Chair Paul Volker to get the inflation under control. In 1980, Volker raised rates to a record high of 20 percent. Inflation still shot up to 11.6 percent in March. High mortgage and car loan rates made homes and cars unaffordable, curtailed consumer spending and sent the economy into a severe recession. 

Argentina’s Consumer Price Index started surging in 1946 after President Juan Peron nationalized the central bank and had the banks expand the money supply and lower rates in order to accommodate aggressive public spending. The annual inflation rate reached 18.74%. By the end of 1951, the CPI surged to 50.21%. The accumulated inflation rate in just six years reached 297.57%. Clearly, the main cause of Argentina’s hyperinflation was its central bank’s enabling of political profligacy.

In January 2007, Argentina’s President Christina Kirchner, in a striking similarity to Trump, didn’t like her experts’ consumer price index numbers. So she fired them, replaced them with political appointees and threated prosecution against independent economists who published higher CPI estimates.

Turkey’s another example. Its inflation rates have been in double digits since Trump’s authoritarian idol, President Erdogan, appointed a central bank head to lower rates. Although the bank eventually raised rates, annual price gains were still around 40% as of January 2025.

These are examples of politicians seizing control over central banks for their own political gain while their countries bore the pain of higher inflation. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a House subcommittee, in referring to Volker’s increase of rates to stem rising inflation, . “No one wants to see that happen again”… except Trump.

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The post TRUMP SUES FOR LOWER RATES. WILL RAISE INFLATION AND CONSUMER PRICES first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

After all, Putin’s popularity only grows with his invasions. His ratings rose to 84 percent during the second war in Chechnya and to 88 percent after he annexed Crimea. Putin has called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”  The takeover of Venezuela has to evoke the “he-did-it-why-can’t-I” justification to invade NATO members that were formerly part of the USSR. 

Trump’s aggression could also give Xi implied permission to bully its neighbors around the South China Sea and fulfill its historic claim to Taiwan. China has already violated the Hague International Court’s order declaring than Vietnam had the legal right to drill there. But it had to back off citing doubt that America would come to its aid . There’s no doubt that Trump won’t now. 

 Both countries have been trying to carve the world up into their own spheres of influence with each ruled by a single dictator. Trump would like nothing more than to join them. He’s knowingly diminishing America’s status as a superpower and watching as  Putin and Xi supplant the US-dominated world order with one that will give them and Trump the power and leverage to write the rules and intimidate other countries. 

His intensions, if you believe what his declaration says, that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again” portend more aggression outside U.S. borders. Moreover, Trump’s Security Strategy puts the first priority on the Western Hemisphere, which declares the Americas and their surrounding waters as Washington’s sphere of dominance.

There’s a better way to expand Washington’s sphere of dominance in Latin America. It’s by growing US trust, trade, influence and hegemony  (dominance achieved through political and economic efforts) in the region. 

Sadly, though, it’s not in Trump’s DNA. He’s much more comfortable with cruel force and pernicious power.  But the opportunity is there for a new and rational President or for Republicans with integrity and the county’s best interests at heart. 

Venezuela’s GDP has fallen by 75% in a decade. Oil production has collapsed. Public services can barely function. In seven out of 24 Venezuelan states the food insecurity rate is 99%, and only three states are lower than 90%. Around 82.4% of households live in poverty  and around 50.5% live in extreme poverty. 

So, the better solution is to employ a small Marshal Plan in Venezuela like the US did in Europe after World War II, which built economic and political stability. Given the Venezuelans’ jubilation over Maduro’s fall, the country is likely to welcome one there and cooperate.

After the devastation of Europe in World War II, the Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization, agricultural production, brought extensive investment into the region, expanded traded, established financial stability and stimulated the U.S. economy by developing markets for American goods.

Similarly to Europe in 1948, Venezuela’s requirements for foreign food and other essential products far exceed its ability to pay for them. So the country needs significant assistance to prosper, and the US is in a position and has the opportunity to fulfill its needs … and also the needs of the greater region, which ranks as one of the most unequal regions in the world with the poorest 50 percent only holding 0.8 percent of its wealth.

A Marshal-type plan is also necessary to supplant China’s rapidly growing influence in Latin America and Russia’s military aid to Venezuela. It sent nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela as a show of force in 2018. China ratified a “strategic partnership” with Venezuela last October to establish a platform for spreading its influence across Latin America. China also loaned more than $100 billion to the region over the last quarter-century.

But if US oil companies control  and then export Venezuela’s oil revenues instead of redirecting them back into the country, no government will be able to restore even a modicum of prosperity to the country. 

And a quick disengagement from Venezuela by the U.S. is likely to leave it fatally ungoverned, unstable, and losing people and capital. 

Tragically for Venezuela and the world’s stability, Trump is no Darth Vaderwho, after a lifetime of evil, becomes an unselfish and well-meaning.  

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The post TRUMP’S CHOICES AFTER VENEZUELA first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The decision handed the wealthiest Americans oversized control over how America was governed and planted the seed that grew into the widest wealth spread in American history. For example, Trump’s signed into law a 4.5 trillion-dollar tax bill which provided that the country would recover the lost revenues by cutting the safety nets that lower-earners depend on, such as Medicare, Medicaid and food programs.

Disavowing 89 years of precedent, the majority labored mightily to justify its finding that corporations and Super PACs – believe it or not — “speak” when they spend money to fund political campaigns. Alas, we all thought that only humans and parrots can speak.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons … is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s” decision.

The majority justified its holding that corporations can speak because “they are associations of humans, which makes no sense. Corporations often contradict their human shareholders’ beliefs when they fund candidates and policies their shareholders oppose. As Justice Stevens said, “Nor does [the majority] tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders oppose.”

Moreover, the Supreme Court previously held that state corporate law – not federal law —  a corporation’s governing structure, and ordered federal courts to defer to state law.  And it’s been that way for more than two centuries. 

When a state withholds the power to fund political campaigns, campaign funding is unauthorized and void; it doesn’t exist. So there’s nothing to protect. Federal law is mostly regulatory and prohibitory, limiting the exercise of corporate power. It does not bestow powers on  corporations.

Readers have to wonder why the majority labored so hard to reach its conclusion. One answer is that the concurrences of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Roberts, was necessary to carry the decision. Their willingness to stretch the Constitution to accommodate the Republican party was evident when they joined Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett to become the current Supreme Court majority. 

Citizens United was decided by the Republican majority and turned Republican power into law.  The decision was followed by a flood of campaign spending by corporations and Super PACs that spent $1,755 trillion on Republican campaigns in the 2024 election cycle while they spent $.787 trillion on Democratic campaigns. Moreover, two-thirds of business’s (including corporations) spending funded Republican campaigns. It worked. 90% of it went to Republican winners. 

The Court’s majority concluded that large spending on campaigns doesn’t increase corruption or cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.  Wrong on both counts. 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats back a constitutional amendment overruling Citizens United. Also, a majority of Americans (55%) consider corruption in government a major cause of their loss of trust. 

Ever since Roberts became chief justice in 2005, his main objectives have been clear: to empower corporate America and help Republicans consolidate power. It wasn’t too long before he added the priority of accommodating Trump’s march to autocracy.

Indeed, led by Roberts, the Republican Majority appears ready to transfer enormous amounts of power from Congress to the Republican President, which would brazenly violate a clear legislative prohibition as well as the Constitutions mandates for separation of powers, checks and balances and three independent branches of government.

Yes, folks. This is where we’ve come – a Supreme Court with pernicious political holdings that rival Constitutional ones, Congressional Republicans who’ve checked their spines at the Capitol doors, and a sociopathic President whose obsession with self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement precludes any focus on what’s best for America.

The only feasible solution is to replace Trump’s enslave Republicans with Republicans not afraid of him, or by Democrats. We’d relish in overdue bipartisan legislating.

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The post Supreme Court Magicians Held Corporations Speak Like Humans By Spending Billions On Political Campaigns  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump claimed in his brief that countries are paying America trillions of dollars in tariffs. Of course Justices knew tariffs are not paid by the exporting countries, they’re paid by American consumers. Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts, noted that tariffs are a tax on Americans. The Justices are also aware that many countries are avoiding Trump’s tariffs by replacing America with other trading partners.

• Canada imports more cars from Mexico for the first time in three decades.China, the world’s largest soybeans buyer, hasn’t bought any soybeans  from US farmers. They’re now buying them from Brazil and Argentina. Just like in his first term, Trump will have to pay them again. India and China are restoring trade ties to avoid Trump’s tariffs. Peru switched to buying textiles and blueberries from other countries.14 countries formed a trade group that excluded America.The EU is expanding its list of trade partners to avoid Trump’s tariffs. c are joining a common market of South American countries that excludes the U.S.

In his brief, Trump referred to   trade deficits as “losses”.  The Justices know better — when businesses buy goods from foreign countries, they’re exchanging currency for something of value.

Trump told the Justices he’s made “historic deals” with several countries. At best though, Trump’s deals are frameworks for agreement that require much more detailed negotiating and may never become deals. 

The only reason Trump made those inaccurate claims to the Justices, is that Trump doesn’t think he’s lying.

Perhaps Trump’s address to the UN is the best proof that his false claims are his realities. Trump claimed, “I ended seven un-endable wars,” which “were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed.” In fact, two of the wars never existed, two more didn’t end, and the others were short, minor skirmishes in which “countless thousands of people” weren’t killed. 

Trump’s claim to the UN was made to 193 member countries and their delegates, whom Trump knew were knowledgeable about international wars. He believed he was telling the truth.

The whole world watched a mob of Trump supporters: storm the Capitol; 

injure police with bats and chemical sprays; smash windows and doors; force their way into the Capitol; vandalize congressional offices; damage and steal government property; and build gallows and chant “Hang Pence.’

Trump saw what we saw, but later described it as a day of love, said rioters were “hugging and kissing” police, “had love in their heart” and were patriots. 

It may be hard to believe, but our President  is a pathological liar  — a person who believes their lies. Trump’s National Security Adviser observed, “Trump can’t tell the difference between what’s true and what’s false ….Trump [says] what he believes ….”

 While pathological liars may be able to navigate their way through society,  

they should not be the leader of the free world. The 25^th Amendment provides for the President’s removal if he’s unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. If there were ever a need for it, it is now.

Twitter (X) https://x.com/ChaosPolicy/status/1990837866721947771?s=20

The post TRUMP’S BELIEVED HIS LIES TO SUPREME COURT  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The Democrats settled for a promise that the Senate will vote on a bill to extend the subsidies by the end of the second week of December when Speaker  The Democrats who voted with the Republicans are either stupid or have been corrupted by our Chief Corrupter, President Trump. 

Open Enrollment in ACA coverage for 2026 begins on November 1^st. The subsidies are extremely unlikely to be adopted by then, so the options that millions of Americans will be left with will require higher premiums and lower coverage.

Republicans have been trying to cut health benefits for years and currently target Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Democrats ignored the fact that Trump’s obscene tax cuts are part of a decades-long sinister plan to increase our deficits and national debt, and create shortfalls so they can throw up their hands and lament that they have no option but to cut America’s safety nets. 

The post DEMOCRATS JUST LOST THE MIDTERMS, JOINING REPUBLICANS IN DENYING AMERICANS AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE   first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump knows that his bid for the Supreme Court to let him scrap the Constitution’s right to birthright citizenship is a loser. But it’s his Trojan Horse to get the Court to limit the scope of preliminary injunctions to the parties to the litigation instead of covering every person and company in the country, as they do now.

Nationwide injunctions have stifled many of Trump’s illegal efforts through Executor Orders, such as drastically paring the government workforce, drastically cutting financial assistance for domestic programs, freezing foreign aid, and ending diversity programs. If Trump gets his way, nation-wide injunctions that block unconstitutional executive orders will have to wait until they are decided by the Supreme Court to determine if they’re enforceable nation-wide.

In the meantime, Trump can continue to enforce unconstitutional executive orders for as long as it takes to get a Supreme Court decision. For example, if a lower court enjoins Trump from enforcing an order to jail journalists who oppose him as a violation of the 1^st Amendment, the case must be decided by the Supreme Court before we know if the order can apply nation-wide.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has a track record of delaying decisions to protect Trump. For example, the Court’s conservative majority delayed his criminal trials until after the 2024 election. By contrast, it took the Court just 16 days to decide Nixon wasn’t immune from prosecution and one day to make Republican George W. Bush President in his legal contest with Al Gore. 

The results of limiting the scope of injunctions, as Trump is asking the Supreme Court to do, seems unworkable. First, it will give Trump the choice of where to and, more importantly, where not to enforce his unconstitutional executive orders. That will open the door to requiring donations to his campaign to accommodate the interests of different parties, such as universities with large  international student bodies, who pay higher tuitions than U.S. citizens.

Immigrants, especially pregnant immigrants, will rush to locations where Trump hasn’t challenged preliminary injunctions or where courts have issued injunctions that apply only to litigants or in their districts.  For instance, a group of blue states challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship order win an injunction blocking the order in their states while it remains in place in other states.

There’s reason to worry, however, that the Supreme Court’s favoring of Trump will continue. Although it recently blocked Trump from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, it chose not to decide whether the 1798 law was applicable.

The 1798 Alien Enemies Act allows the president to skip the usual immigration court process to detain and deport anyone age 14 or older from a “hostile nation or government” when “there is a declared war” or when a “foreign nation” threatens “invasion or predatory incursion” against the United States. The law has been used only three times: during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II – each time satisfying the law’s requirement that a war had been declared.

Trump bizarrely maintains that we are being invaded by Nicaraguan gangs. The Supreme Court could have taken judicial notice (a legal principle that allows a court to acknowledge a fact without requiring proof) of the falsity of Trump’s claim. Had the Justices held that the1798 law was inapplicable, all Trump’s offensive orders would be declared unconstitutional across the entire country.

Also, it seems that chaos is acceptable to Justices Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch when it benefits Donald Trump. For example, the Supreme Court unanimously put Trump back on the Colorado ballot holding that different ballots in different states at different times could nullify the votes of millions and change the results of elections. The Court unanimously held, “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.”

Yet Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch seem to be willing to tolerate the chaos that attends limited injunctions. They’ve gone public about their preference to limit nationwide injunctions to litigants and to the judges districts even though it would result in chaos. They joined a Gorsuch opinion, warning that “lower courts would be wise to heed that retiring the universal injunction … will lead federal courts to become a little truer to the historic limits of their office, and promote more thoughtful rulings.”

There’s more reason to worry. The Supreme Court let the Trump administration remove, pending appeal, protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States without risk of deportation under an Obama program. The decision affects the many Venezuelans currently living in the United States legally under the Biden program.

Sadly, the Supreme Court has, for now, evaded its obligation to defend the Constitution’s core mandate of three co-equal, independent branches of government. It could allow courts to hold Trump and his enablers in contempt for violating their orders and prosecute them with an attorney outside the Execute branch.

The post TRUMP’S TROJAN HORSE TO DO AWAY WITH NATION-WIDE INJUCTIONS? first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump’s behavior illustrates his condition. He’s defied six court orders, including the Supreme Court’s. One was needed to restart billions in foreign aid he froze, even though it spreads America’s influence and military might around the world, including the countries installation military bases. Trump’s freeze is enabling China’s and Russia’s military advancements beyond ours. Moreover, foreign aid seeds foreign industries that buy U.S goods. For 10 years, major recipients of U.S. aid were responsible for two-thirds of the growth in U.S. exports.

Trump demonstrated his inability to feel guilt, shame or empathy when he cancelled most of our foreign medical aid, risking hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious diseases worldwide. He also paused all domestic assistance for education, health care, anti-poverty programs, disaster relief, medical research, and prevention of animal cruelty.

His inability to consider the consequences of his decisions is manifest in his most destructive tariffs since President Hoover’s, which extended the Great Depression by a decade.  The tariffs boosted the probability of a global recession to 60%. Worse, Trump could mismanage it into a depression. It was international cooperation that prevented the Great Recession of 2008 from becoming another depression. There will be no international cooperation this time. Trump’s alienation of our trading partners and his obsessive allegiance to Putin that threatens all of Europe has trashed our allies’ trust in America’s government. The cooperation he’ll sorely need in a financial downturn won’t be there.

Moreover, Trump’s cabinet will be useless — they are like school children planning mischief compared to what will be needed, and they’re there only to cheer on his misguided decisions. But don’t worry about Trump. He’s eliminating the anti-corruption guardrails to create  the perfect environment for graft, self-dealing and lucrative influence-peddling. He’ll be fine.

The most compelling proof of his focus away from what’s best for America is his appointment of the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet in our history which threatens America with disease and death (see video), diminished our military prowess, a politicized FBI (see video), intelligence that accommodates Putin and the prosecution of officials who did their job for the country.

So, why are Republicans waiting to impeach and convict Trump? If it’s to keep their seats, they will most likely lose them to a Democratic in the next election or to a primary challenger whose not a Trump devotee.

Why is the Supreme Court is dragging its feet instead of allowing lower courts to hold Trump and his enablers for civil contempt (which the president can’t pardon) and jailing him until he complies with their  orders. It’s time to stop Trump’s delay tactics that the Supreme Court accommodated to save him from multiple criminal trails.

The post WE HAVE THE TOOLS TO QUICKLY STOP TRUMP’s DEVASTATION, BUT WE’RE NOT USING THEM FAST ENOUGH first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Still, Trump and his team plan to push through his other nominees who are allegedly sexual predators, such as Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, who is embroiled in a rape allegation from 2017 that he seemingly kept from the Trump team, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who allegedly sexually assaulted his children’s former babysitter two decades ago.

Senate Republicans will face a difficult test of their courage to reject  Trump’s dangerous nominees. One Trump adviser warned, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary…. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it… The president gets to decide his Cabinet, no one else.” The Trump team’s newest threat makes it clear: No dissent among Republicans will be tolerated. 

One test will be whether Senate Republicans are willing accept responsibility for excessive Covid deaths in order to avoid Trump’s retaliation. Trump’s chose RFK Jr., who is not a doctor and has no medical training, to head the Department of Health and Human Resources. He’s an avid anti-vaxxer who grossly exaggeraties the side effects of Covid vaccines and will discourage their use even though data show that the unvaccinated are 68 times more likely to die from COVID than the fully vaccinated. RFK Jr. vowed to purge entire departments at HSS if necessary to employ his priorities. 

Another such test is whether Republicans will risk a nuclear crisis triggered by Trump and the use of the military against Trump’s “enemy within.” Trump chose Fox News co-host Pete Hegseth, who has demonstrated an unstinting loyalty to Trump, as Defense Secretary. So

Republicans must recall that it took Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Milley to stop him from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency. Milley called the head of China’s military and assured him there was no threat of an attack to prevent a crises. Trump also told Republican donors he wanted to bomb North Korea with a plane he’d put a Chinese flag on. There will be no Milley there if Republicans confirm Hegseth – only a rabidly pro-Trump Fox News co-host.

Hegseth wrote that if Democrats win an election, there’ll be a civil war and the military “will be forcedto choose sides,” echoing Trump’s threats to unleash the US military, on “the enemy within,” Consistent with his rhetoric, Hegseth sports a tattoo of an American flag that displays an AR-15 assault rifle. Trump and Hegseth are planning to purge generals who push back on Trump’s decisions, leaving them free to use the US military as planned.

Confirming Trump’s pick of Pam Bondi for Secretary of Defense would demonstrate that the Republicans don’t value an independent Department of Justice. Bondi, although fully qualified by her credentials, has shown full obedience to Trump over the years.  She’s an election denier, joined Trump’s first impeachment defense, labeled it a “sham” and blamed the prosecutors for Trump’s four indictments, warning that “The prosecutors will be prosecuted…” and that “The investigators will be investigated.” 

If the Senate Republicans don’t have the courage to reject Trump’s dangerous appointments, there will be no doubt he’s subjugated our legislative branch and, because the Supreme Court has already joined his team, Trump could do what he admires most in Vladimir Putin, he could do “whatever the hell he wants.”

The post Trump Tests GOP To Deliver His Final Step to Dictatorship first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, most voters in battleground states believe that former President Donald Trump would do more for the economy than President Biden in a second term.reflecting their belief in the Trump economy’s potential.

Polling Results and the Trump Economy

A new poll shows Trump leading in all swing states except Wisconsin (where Trump and Biden tie), with 56 percent of voters saying the former president would do a good job on the economy versus just 40 percent for Biden. 

The Reality of the Trump Economy

These voters are sadly mistaken. Trump’s first term and current policy proposals are dire warnings that a second round of Trumponomics would be devastating to everyday Americans. 

Trump Economy and Tax Cuts

Trump is promising to give big tax cuts to everybody, and to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the truth is that his proposed tax cuts will benefit the wealthy at the expense of low- and middle-income Americans, and he will cut entitlements to cover any lost tax revenues. 

Historical Lessons from the Trump Economy

We’ve seen this movie before. In 2016, Trump promised his tax cuts would favor working- and middle-class Americans. The cuts he delivered, however, favored the wealthy, widened income inequality, and encouraged massive tax fraud (which Trump may view as normal practice, given his own bogus tax write-offs). 

Impact of Trump Economy on Income Distribution

By the time they expire next year, Trump’s tax cuts are projected to have boosted after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of earners by 3 percent, to an average of $2.1 million. But they barely affect the bottom 60 percent of earners, increasing their 2025 incomes just 1 percent, to $41,800.

Long-Term Effects of Trump Economy on Tax Savings

By 2025, average tax savings will amount to just $70 for the bottom 20 percent of earners, $61,090 for the top 1 percent, and $252,300 for the top 0.1 percent. If extended to 2027, the tax cuts would actually make low- and middle-income earners worse off.

Trump Economy and Federal Debt

Trump promised his tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating robust economic growth. But that never happened, so they ended up adding between $1 trillion and $2 trillion to the federal debt. 

Entitlement Spending and the Trump Economy

Republican leaders blamed this on Democrats for borrowing too much, and they use this talking point to push for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Trump himself signaled openness to cutting entitlements before walking his comments back and promising to protect them. But unlike the party elites, most rank-and-file Republican voters actually want to expand them. 

Fiscal Challenges and the Trump Economy

Rising entitlement spending isn’t our real fiscal problem. In fact, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office dramatically lowered its forecast for growth in healthcare costs. Our deficits are due primarily to Trump’s tax cuts. Extending them would add another $4.6 trillion to the federal debt, CBO found. 

Republican Proposals in the Trump Economy Era

Rather than confront that reality, the Republican Study Committee, which represents a majority of congressional Republicans, keeps proposing big cuts to Social Security. So when Trump vows to “never…hurt” entitlements, or that extending his tax cuts will benefit the majority of Americans and pay for themselves, voters would be ill-advised to believe him.  

Trump Economy and Tariff Impacts

Ditto for Trump’s claims about tariffs. He is threatening to slap new ones of at least 10 percent on the $3 trillion in goods we import annually. He insists exporting countries would pay for this, but it’s actually American consumers and businesses who would pay.

Effects of Tariffs in the Trump Economy

Universal 10 percent tariffs would cost U.S. households an average of $1,500 a year as companies raise prices to absorb them. They would trigger additional inflation, further increasing the cost of necessities like food, housing and healthcare, hitting working families hardest. And they’d endanger American jobs by hampering U.S. companies’ ability to compete. 

Trump Economy and Trade War Consequences

Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, for example, led to higher costs for U.S. manufacturers when Chinese suppliers cut their exports to the U.S. to avoid the tariffs. And when China switched to importing soybeans from the European Union, Argentina, Brazil and Russia, U.S. soybean exports plummeted by more than $10 billion. China also retaliated against Trump’s trade war by lowering tariffs on other trading partners to lure their imports away from the U.S.  

Donald Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim economies including the U.S. and, importantly, excluding China. The TPP would have eliminated 18,000 tariffs on made-in-America exports including every type of U.S.-manufactured product and most agricultural products. It would also have imposed stronger labor and environmental standards on Asia’s state-owned enterprises, leveling the playing field with U.S. businesses, particularly small businesses, which make up 98 percent of U.S. exporters and employ millions of American workers. 

Walking away from the agreement made imported goods from Asia more expensive for Americans, hampered our exports to the southeast Asia, and hit Americans’ wallets, lowering average U.S. incomes by $131 billion through 2030.  

By scuttling the TPP, Trump ceded the field to China, which stepped in and replaced the U.S. with a Chinese-led trade agreement among 15 Asia‐Pacific countries, boosting trade among them and offering them greater access to China’s vast markets. That left Washington with fewer enticements to convince other countries to adopt U.S. trading rules.  

Such perverse tax and trade policies are likely to lead to a recession, which in Trump’s hands could spiral into depression. Tax cuts and extensive tariffs deepened the Great Depression. But in the 1920s the U.S. was a major creditor nation, with the flexibility to borrow and provide liquidity and stimulus. Today Republican tax cuts have driven U.S. debt to 116 percent of GDP, hobbling our ability to engineer our way out of a crisis. 

Unlike Presidents Bush and Obama, who tapped highly qualified leaders to manage the recovery from the 2008 recession, Trump will avoid anybody who isn’t a sycophant or who has the backbone to disagree with him. Instead he’ll hire enablers who are likely to preside over a new crisis and find ways to profit from it while the rest of the country suffers. It will fall hardest on low- and middle-income earners who haven’t shared in the wealth Trump’s tax cuts generated for elites.  

The post Mad about the economy? Blame Donald Trump. first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The global slowdown has arrived in America. The yield below the three-month treasury is above the yield on the ten-year treasury. Every time that’s happened since the 1970s, a recession followed.This global cooperation crisis highlights the absence of international support that could mitigate the economic impact.

The Global Cooperation Crisis and the Last Financial Crisis

Most CFOs worry that a US recession will hit before the 2020 election. If it does, the international cooperation between the US and other governments that prevented the Great Recession of 2008 from becoming another depression will be fatally absent. Donald Trump has alienated the allies we’ll need next time, and he’s hired inexperienced advisers instead of experienced experts.

The Impact of the Global Cooperation Crisis on Economic Recovery

Presidents Bush and Obama tapped Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (formerly Goldman Sachs’ CEO), Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner to recover from the 2008 recession. All three were deliberative and experienced in dealing with economic and monetary policy.

The Global Cooperation Crisis: Trump’s Lack of Expertise and the Impact of Steel Tariffs

Trump is anything but deliberative or experienced. He launched his steel tariffs upon becoming “unglued” over matters unrelated to the wisdom of imposing tariffs. Neither Trump nor his Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, arrived in America ever read a book on the modern economics of trade. The fortunes Ross’s steel and textile companies made from George W. Bush’s steel tariffs and import limits on Chinese clothing explain Ross’s eagerness to pummel other countries with tariffs. He was unaware of their consequences.

The Global Cooperation Crisis: Challenges to Trade and Policy

Ross’s international banking experience was as shareholder and Vice Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus which the US suspected of money laundering, being a tax haven for Russian oligarchs and helping them evade US sanctions. Ross also had a 35% stake in the Bank of Ireland and was accused of insider trading when he sold it.

The Global Cooperation Crisis: Mnuchin’s Inexperience and Its Economic Implications

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has little or no experience or known views of his own on monetary or economic policy. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers tweeted “Mnuchin may be the greatest sycophant in Cabinet history.”  Mnuchin even seemed unfamiliar with the provision established under the Dodd-Frank legislation to improve coordination among financial regulators. His principal qualification for his cabinet post was helping raise millions for Trump’s Presidential campaign.

How the Global Cooperation Crisis Affects Trump’s Financial Strategies

Fed Chair Jay Powell is the only Trump asset experienced enough to deal with a financial crisis. But Trump has repeatedly attacked him, comparing him to Chinese Chairman Xi as an enemy of the US. That doesn’t bode well for Trump giving Powell the necessary authority to act. If reelected and if he can legally fire Powell (which is unclear), Trump is certain to replace him with another sycophant.

With or without Powell, it’s doubtful Trump’s team could engineer a recovery from another recession like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner did. Three weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the three of them coordinated announcements among the major central banks that they were lowering interest rates. The Fed and the European Central Bank cut their policy rate by 50 basis points. Even China was persuaded to join the US and other countries in cutting rates. Subsequently, the Fed and five other central banks jointly announced they would provide cross-border dollar liquidity through currency swaps, which were key to restoring financial stability and stemming a deeper crisis. All the governments involved praised the high degree of international cooperation.

The Global Cooperation Crisis: Erosion of Trust and Future Risks

But other countries won’t be eager to work with Trump. He’s alienated them and sowed distrust, leaving our relationships with them in tatters.

He chastised them for unfair trade practices in his UN address last week. He imposed tariffs without warning and abandoned and insulted a slew of multilateral organizations. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, fracturing already-strained relationships with Europe. He berated and threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization.  He exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with eleven Pacific Rim countries, damaging their trust in the US. He withdrew from the Paris accord, falsely accusing its signatories of disadvantaging the US.

Trump insulted our allies in the G-7 and NATO while openly adoring Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. Nearly as many Germans (55%) think the U.S. is as much of a threat as Russia (56%). Only 27% said they feared North Korea more than the US, and only 16% said they feared China more. Seventy-two percent want German foreign policy to be more independent of the US.

America’s allies no longer believe American interests are aligned with theirs and are relying less on America. As Foreign Affairs magazine observed, “in the last two years, American hegemony died.”

The Global Cooperation Crisis and the Potential for Future Recession

Trump’s refusal to take advice, combativeness and inability to compromise will likely preclude his cooperation with other governments. It was that type of behavior that worsened the Great Depression. Governments raised tariffs to make exports cheaper and imports more expensive. waged currency wars (Trump has threatened to devalue the dollar). Like Trump, President Hoover ignored warnings of the dangers of tariffs, which economists blame for deepening the Depression.

In 1929 the US was a large creditor nation and the Fed’s discount rate was above 6%. We are now a debtor nation to the tune of a record $22 trillion and the Fed’s benchmark short-term rate is between 1.75% and 2%. So the US will have a tougher time borrowing to spend us out of a recession and lowering interest rates to stimulate growth.

Add Trump’s flawed character and the inexperience of his administration, and we have a lot to worry about.

The post In the Last Financial Crisis International Cooperation Saved the US. In the Next, It Won’t Be There. first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

He ignored two years of warnings that America was not equipped to handle a pandemic, that his approach would lead to the loss of lives, and that his ongoing cuts to our defenses would make America vulnerable to the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic.”  Now the pandemic has hit, and we’ve never been less prepared, thanks to Trump’s actions and inactions.

In 2018, he fired Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, who had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics. A month later, Trump’s National Security Council advisor John Bolton disbanded the entire team of Timothy Ziemer, Trump’s senior director for global health, and never replaced it. Dr. Luciana Borio, the NSC’s director for medical and biodefense preparedness, left in May 2018 and was also not replaced.

The administration’s pandemic response chain of command is in disarray. Trump agency heads and advisers clash over who’s in charge. State leaders bemoan the lack of a clear leader.

In November 2019, a blue-ribbon bi-partisan commission warned “the American people are far from safe,” and urged  Trump to reestablish strong leadership on health at the NSC and invest more in biodefense. “The U.S. must either pay now [or pay] much greater…human and economic costs” when a pandemic hits,” it argued.

Instead, Trump proposed defunding the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) efforts to help other countries combat epidemics and prevent infectious diseases from invading America.  He also proposed to cut discretionary funding for the CDC.

Trump’s 2020 budget slashed the CDC 10%, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 12% —  “devastating” cuts at a time when state and local health departments have 50,000 fewer workers than they did in 2008. Also cut was a $30 million emergency response fund created under Obama to deploy experts in the event of a crisis.

As a result, not only has there been a shortage of corona test kits, but the kits sent to labs weren’t usable for weeks. 300 million respirator masks are needed by healthcare workers; the government had only 12 million, many of which had expired.

On March 2, the 472 tests that had been posted to the CDC’s website were removed because U.S. number pales in comparison to South Korea (109,591 tests), the UK (13,525), Italy (23,345) and others.  Even Turkey tested twice as many people as we did (940).

On March 5, Trump finally signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight coronavirus (which he might not have needed to do if he hadn’t decimated funding for the CDC, HHS and others). But it was too late to instill calm, particularly in the markets. In the two days following the law’s announcement, the Dow Jones plummeted 1224 points. At present writing, it’s more than 5000 points off its pre-corona high (29,551 on February 12).

It’s the president’s job to calm the country in a crisis. But it’s hard to believe a president who has told more than 16,000 lies and counting, who repeatedly contradicts his public health experts, and who blames everything on his critics.

Trump told us  “the risk to the American people remains very low.”  The World Health Organization told us that the outbreak presents the “highest level” of risk for the world.”

Trump said the mortality rate from coronavirus was 2% and the number of cases in the U.S would “within a couple of days [be] close to zero.”  But U.S. cases are proliferating, and health experts warn the virus will continue to spread. The World Health Organization says the mortality rate among documented cases so far is 3.4%, and actual mortality could be higher, depending on the quality of the local healthcare system.

Trump calls 3.4% mortality a “false number.” But it’s his numbers that are misleading.  He cited the March 6 tally of coronavirus in the U.S. — 225 cases and 14 deaths — and high recovery rates, as evidence health risks are low. But we missed the bulk of U.S. cases due to problems with testing protocols.  At present writing, in the U.S. there are actually 1,016 cases, 31 deaths, and 15 recoveries we know of.  That’s a 3% mortality rate, and both the incidence and the mortality rate are trending up.

Trump claimed that his administration was very close to a vaccine. His acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf promised it would be ready within “several months.” The WHO begged to differ, saying a vaccine would take “at least a year to a year and a half at best.”

Trump said the vaccine would be affordable for those who need it. On the same day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar  told Congress, “we can’t control that price.” Azar ought to know; he was head of operations for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. His concern may be more about Big Pharma profitability than containing the virus.

Trump’s supporters and Republicans in Congress have tolerated Trump’s incompetence, corruption, tailoring foreign policy for his own financial gain and coddling Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. None of those things made much of a dent in Trump’s core support.

But this is different. Trump’s actions are costing American lives, and that may cost him some support.  He once boasted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”  It seems that theory is about to be tested.

Neil Baron is an attorney who has represented many institutions involved in the international markets and advised various parts of the federal government on economic issues. 

The post Trump’s unraveling series of blunders is costing American lives — and will test his ‘Fifth Avenue shooting’ theory first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.