Tag: donald-trump

Power Grabs and Executive Overreach

Pat Liberty

 The recent military invasion of Venezuela and subsequent kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro is outrageous on many levels. It is true many Venezuelans are cheering Maduro’s ouster from the presidency; he was an authoritarian ruler who oppressed people and treated the government like his personal law keeping force (not unlike the occupant and the US military).

The possibility of a better life that has Venezuelans dancing in the streets doesn’t change the larger situation. Venezuela is a sovereign country, and the US had no authority to attack it. Some have argued that the occupant didn’t need congressional approval under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and the War Powers Resolution (WPR). The WPR is intended to limit presidential power by requiring consultation and potential withdrawal of troops after 60-90 days if Congress doesn’t authorize the force, though presidents often claim inherent authority or cite other laws (like the AUMF). The AUMF is a congressional resolution granting the president authority to use military force, most famously after 9/11 that authorized action against those responsible for the attacks. There have been several incarnations of the AUMF. In 2002 it authorized use of military forces against Iraq. In 1991 it authorized military forces against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait.

The AUMF provides broad, open-ended authority for military action, unlike formal declarations of war. Critics argue they have enabled “endless wars” by allowing presidents to use force against evolving threats (like ISIS) without new congressional approval. Many others believe AUMF unconstitutionally transfers Congress’ war-making powers to the executive branch.

While all of this adds some murkiness around who gets to do what and when, it doesn’t change the fact that international law, primarily through the United Nations, prohibits the invasion of a sovereign country. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the US invasion of Venezuela are illegal actions under the UN charter.

The occupant is a wannabe king who, if not able to be a king, is content to be a tyrant. This has angered the international community and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO’s charter says an attack on one country is an attack on all member nations of NATO. There is bound to be some retaliation from the NATO nations.

The precedent this sets on the world stage is terrifying. The occupant’s unilateral action gives tacit permission for other authoritarian regimes to continue their own land grabs, China to Taiwan and Russia to Ukraine and beyond. War is surely on the nearer horizon. It’s hard to know where it will all end, but chances are good it will not be pretty.

Reaching back into Bible times, the occupant is acting like King Herod the Great. He was a puppet ruler for Rome and was so insecure and frightened of losing his power that he squashed all dissent and imprisoned those he saw as a threat. After Jesus was born, Herod was so threatened that he “took out a hit on a toddler” to quote Nadia Bolz-Weber. Herod ordered the death of all children under the age of two when he heard that the king of the Jews had been born.

The occupant is a malignant narcissist, like Herod, who is content to kill, imprison, arrest and silence opposition for the sake of his power. Like Herod, he seeks power for power’s sake. His thugs are now murdering people in the name of immigration enforcement. So far, in the occupant’s great immigration crackdown, a full 73% of people rounded up have no criminal record. This isn’t about immigration; it is about intimidation and silencing opposition. It is about terrifying communities, so they do not voice their anger at the inhumanity of this regime.  

Following the rule of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas (his son) became the Tetrarch ruler. This Herod was the ruler through all of Jesus’ ministry and through his crucifixion.

Herod Antipas is responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist. The Herods (or Herodians as they were known) were not good or righteous kings. However, given their authority they fashioned themselves as lords and kings over the Jewish people. By whatever means they could, they silenced dissent, imposed order and intimidated people. It is what all authoritarian rulers have in common.  The occupant fits the bill to a T.

We are watching history repeat itself.

Unfit for Office

Pat Liberty

While one could reasonably argue that the entire administration of the occupant is unfit for office, the particular focus of this blog is the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr..

Historically this position has been held by a physician with a broad knowledge of public health. Kennedy is neither a physician nor does he have a grip on the complex issue of public health. Under his reign of error, we are seeing vaccine rates diminish. So far this has led to a measles outbreak in Texas. It is only a matter of time before we see other diseases previously eradicated make a comeback due to declining vaccination rates.

Currently there is a resolution in the Senate (S.Res.217) which expresses the sense of the Senate that Kennedy does not have the confidence of the Senate or the American people to faithfully carry out the duties of his office. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Kennedy said to Congress: “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.” Well, no kidding.

Kennedy is overhauling the Department of Health and Human Services and slashing millions of dollars from its congressionally approved budget. This is part of the occupant’s war on science as key health agencies are being closed. The norms for scientific review of health data are being ignored, research agencies are being defunded and public health department funding is being slashed.

According to NPR, the US public health service started in the 1700’s when doctors cared for seamen who were sick or injured. Their work helped prevent the spread of yellow fever and smallpox in the 1800’s and led to research on sanitation as a way to prevent disease.

Around 1900 the federal government started making sure that the food and medicine Americans consume is safe. Both the public health corps and the food regulation organization operated independently until President Dwight Eisenhower created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953.

Today the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for Medicare and Medicaid and the marketplace for health insurance created by the Affordable Care Act. Under Kennedy’s errant guidance, the HHS budget is being slashed by $880 billion over the next ten years, most of it affecting Medicaid.

Medicaid is jointly financed by states and the federal government but administered by states within broad federal rules. Cuts to Medicaid at the federal level leave states with difficult questions about how to fund the gap.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading independent sources for health policy, research, polling and news, these cuts represent 29% of State Medicaid spending per resident, 6% of state taxes per resident and 19% of education spending per pupil. No matter how you do the math, the impact is profound.

What we can expect as Medicaid is slashed is poorer health outcomes for America’s most vulnerable populations, increased hospital admissions and increased mortality. The population hardest hit by Medicaid cuts will be the poor, who already have disproportionately higher mortality rates. Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs assures that poverty will continue to claim more lives.

The mark of any civilized society is how well it cares for its most vulnerable members. With Kennedy at the helm, the poor are even more screwed than they already are.

Kennedy is unfit to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Contact your Senators today to encourage their support for S.Res.217 calling for Kennedy’s ouster.  

The Changing Face of Education

Pat Liberty

Last week the occupant signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education. Ultimately the Department can only be abolished by Congress, but with a Republican majority in the House and Senate this should not be a problem.

What is a problem, however, is the implications of this action. The occupant is moving to privatize education through block grants given directly to states. States already control a majority of the money that funds education, so his stated reason for dismantling the department is disingenuous at best.

Federal dollars are approved by Congress and given to the Department of Education to allocate to states. Giving the money to states as block grants means that parents could use vouchers to send their children to private schools. As Project 2025 states, parents should have the authority to determine how their children are educated. Translation: parents can use public monies to send their children to private school.

In the current system, federal funds are primarily used to support underperforming schools and offer additional resources for poor children. Children with disabilities, 95% of whom are educated in public schools, will have less access to adequate education that accommodates their disabilities. Block grants that allow parents to purchase vouchers means that public schools, especially those in low-income communities will have fewer resources.

The Department of Education champions enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination in education and assuring that every student has access to an education that will help them reach their potential. Dismantling the department means defunding programs that feed, educate, and protect vulnerable and underserved students.

According to the National Education Association (NEA), eliminating programs like Title 1 will divert money from schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty. Support such as reading specialists and smaller class sizes would be eliminated. Reading scores nationally are falling. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), national reading scores declined for both fourth and eighth grade students. Reading scores fell to a record low in 2019 and 2022. A record number of students performed below basic reading competency.  Eliminating reading specialists seems ill advised at best. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, 180,000 teaching positions could be lost, affecting 2.8 million students in low-income communities.

It is likely that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be moved to the Department of Justice. This would practically eliminate the Office’s capacity to protect students against discrimination based on gender, race and disability. The absence of strong federal oversight would leave millions of students vulnerable to discrimination.

Under this cockamamie plan the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would be transferred to another agency, as yet undefined. Over 7.5 million students, or 15% of the student population, receive special education services. Administering funds as block grants to states is unlikely to result in funding special education programs. The public schools that will get the left-overs after parents purchase their private school vouchers will have inadequate resources to fulfill the Individual Education Plans (IEP’s) that many students have to accommodate their learning disabilities.  

The overall goal is to privatize education which will leave the poorest and most vulnerable students, especially those with special needs, in underperforming public schools. The whole of Project 2025 is geared toward victimizing our most vulnerable populations. The Department of Education is just the latest casualty assuring that those in greatest need will get the fewest resources.

The Department of Education is four percent of the entire national budget. Surely eliminating four percent of the budget does nothing to address the national deficit, but it consigns thousands of children to inadequate education that will allow them to function in the future.

Assuring that every child gets an education is a foundation of a stable society. Students that are unable to read or function in the work-a-day world will be trapped in low-wage jobs that will continue the cycle of poverty. How this claims to have Christian values is mind-boggling. Jesus railed against unjust social and political systems that trapped people in poverty. Dismantling the Department of Education is just the latest casualty in Trump’s misguided plan to victimize the poor and under-resource those in most need.  

White Christian Nationalism and Current Politics

Pat Liberty

As I write this, we are on the verge of hearing a verdict in the current trial against former President Trump. He is still facing multiple felonies in other states. I am mindful of the words of Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”  Anything less than a not guilty verdict will unleash hateful rhetoric and cries of foul play, which will incite his base of supporters. The potential for violence cannot be overstated.

Riling up Trump’s base will lead to a surge in the entrenched position of white Christian nationalism, and this is dangerous. Working with an accurate definition of white Christian nationalism is important. Often, when people hear the phrase, they think of patriotic Christians. Surely there is nothing wrong with being patriotic and being a Christian. That’s not what we are talking about.  According to Philip Gorski, chair of the Department of Sociology at Yale, “Patriotism is an adherence to the ideals of the United States, and nationalism is loyalty to your tribe and not the country.” The Republican Party has ceased to be a political party. It is a cult of Donald Trump.

Our nation was built on a two-party system that provides checks and balances to one another. Republicans, at their best, check the tendency of Democrats to spend more than is wise. Democrats, at their best, check the tendency to favor big business at the expense of the working middle and lower classes. Of course, it is much more complex than that. This is just an example of how a healthy two-party political system can function. We need a functioning Republican party for balance. What we have is a cult of personality and raging nationalism. It is complicated by the fact that this particular nationalism calls itself “Christian,” when there is nothing Christian about it. 

Christian nationalism plays on people’s fears. They argue that everything that is wrong with this country can be blamed on non-Christians. And since their definition of Christianity is very narrow, it excludes the LGBTQI community, women, people of color, and those with physical and mental challenges. By the time all the exclusions are made, the only ones left are healthy, white males. They believe the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that laws and policies must protect whites. They deny the separation of church and state which is enshrined in our constitution. It is their belief that the re-entrenchment of patriarchy as the interpreter of all things political and Christian, is the only hope for the future of the country.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Christian nationalism is anti-democratic and threatens to unravel more than the edges of our democracy. In fact, it has the potential to shred the whole fabric of our democracy.  The rise of authoritarianism in the political rhetoric of our current situation is more than troubling. The appeal is to groups who feel they have been anointed by God to take political power. All this is toward the end of protecting white privilege. Make no mistake.

Bart Bonikowski, associate professor of sociology and politics at New York University says, “Christian nationalism in the United States is exclusionary and nostalgic, seeing the nation as going downhill and needing to be recaptured by people who seem themselves as its rightful owners—possibly through authoritarian means.”

According to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research institute (PRRI), nearly one third of Americans now hold Christian Nationalist attitudes. And at the center of it all are fundamentalist churches who have been sucked into right-wing disinformation, conspiracy theories and fears promulgated by nationalists. These fundamentalists are told they need to “take their country back.” And indeed, they will–to about 1700.

There is nothing Christian about White Christian Nationalism. It slaps a little Jesus language on a philosophy that is filled with hatred, misinformation, outright lies and a theology that is twisted almost beyond recognition.

What is needed are moderate Christian voices that speak out against Christian nationalism. It takes courage. It requires being informed. It demands a capacity to articulate Christian faith in different terms than Christian nationalists. If we don’t find our voice and use it, we will surely lose it in the cacophony of political agenda baptized with Jesus language. At its heart it harbors a deep desire for political control, exclusive rights on interpreting Christianity and a systematic dismantling of our democracy.   

History is repeating itself. Knowing that gives us the perspective we need to be a louder voice than that of the Christian nationalists. The future of our country depends on it.