A United States executive branch official evading answering questions at a congressional hearing is not a new thing. But, on February 11, Attorney General Pam Bondi took the evasion to a new level.
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Keeping DHS Unfunded
In January, I wrote about Democrats in the United States Senate proposing a group of changes in US immigration enforcement. Listing some of the suggested changes, I summed them up as largely the adopting of restraints at the US government level “that have generally helped ensure at the state and local level that police violate people’s rights less frequently and can be more likely held to account in instances when they do.”
A high-level national security official in the Trump administration resigned from his position on Tuesday. National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent cited as the reason for his resignation that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”
There was some good news for liberty on Friday. That is when a roughly 80 percent reduction in the fee the United States government imposes on individuals giving up their US citizenship took effect. The fee was lowered from 2,350 dollars to 450 dollars.
Economist and investor Peter Schiff, speaking in the Wednesday episode of his Peter Schiff Show, gave an insightful rundown of some of the economic damage coming to America because President Donald Trump “decided that he was going to go to war with Iran” despite there being “no immediate threat to the United States from Iran.”
Wars of choice, a plethora of changing tariffs and sanctions on countries across the world, and a historically high number of executive orders characterize the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. And all this has been accomplished by the executive branch with minimal pushback from the legislative branch.
Back in 2022, media was reporting on people affixing to gas pumps stickers with a photo of then President Joe Biden pointing toward the gas price display on the gas pumps. The text “I DID THAT!” prominently accompanied the photo on the stickers. People putting the stickers on gas pumps sought to emphasize the judgment that Biden was responsible for the gas price increasing. It looks like those stickers could be making a comeback, with the photo of Biden replaced with one of the current president — Donald Trump.
United States President Donald Trump is coming to resemble more and more the kooky and dangerous characters who led the US into nuclear war in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove. It is black humor in real life.
President Donald Trump, unlike his predecessor in office Joe Biden, talks with reporters quite frequently. In those press conferences and other interactions, Trump makes some misstatements of fact. To an extent it makes sense to cut him some slack regarding misstatements in extemporaneous and impromptu communication. But, Trump making clear misstatements of fact in his annual State of the Union speech is another matter. That is just what we saw when Trump presented the annual speech Tuesday evening.
Donald Trump’s presidential administration has been a big disappointment in several major areas, including the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) prospect of reducing government spending and the America First prospect of the United States government pursuing a foreign policy much less interventionist than before. On both counts, the Turmp administration has led the government in the opposite direction than what was promoted in Trump’s presidential campaign. Spending and the national debt have grown. At the same time, the Trump administration has continued the Biden administration’s Ukraine, Israel, and other wars, while stirring up new wars in Venezuela, Iran, and beyond.