The Brooklyn Rail

The rapid and widespread cruelty of Trump’s moves on January 27—shutting down Head Start, the nutrition program for mothers and infants, veterans’ homeless shelters, nursing homes for seniors, small business loans, domestic violence shelters, Medicaid patients’ medicines (80 million Americans depend on Medicaid), police and firefighters, farm aid, school meals, home heating assistance, landmine clearance, cancer research, etc., was breathtaking. We’ll see if the lower courts and whatever spine is left in Congress will be able to stand up to this assault. It may come down to the states having to fight back on their own.

After widespread confusion and alarm, the Office of Management and Budget sent out a memo two days later rescinding their previous memo but not the Executive Order for a federal aid freeze, which they maintained “will be rigorously implemented.” At this point, no one knows what the actual new rules are.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut posted this on X on January 28:

The freezing of federal grants, the firing of all inspector generals, the immunization of political violence—does everybody not see what’s happening? In a blitzkrieg, Trump is trying to collapse our democracy—and probably our economy—and seize control. Call it what it is.

This “deleting” of the government was all foretold by Curtis Yarvin and his “RAGE” (Retire All Government Employees) plan, which is being implemented now. If you take away everything the government does to help people, all you’ve got left is a government of, by, and for the rich, and that is where this is all headed.

Just as Mr. Yarvin predicted, Americans have finally gotten over their “dictator phobia,” and embraced his idea of a CEO to run the country like a corporation/dictatorship because, as Peter Thiel proclaimed in 2009, they “no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

This immediate blanket federal funding freeze is illegal. Overturning Section 1 of the 14th Amendment is illegal. Firing federal prosecutors for partisan political reasons is illegal. Firing inspector generals for political reasons is illegal. But all of these illegal actions are probably going to end up in the Supreme Court, and we know how that’s going to go.

And the Office of Management and Budget that wreaked all the havoc this week is now going to be headed by Russell Vought, who was one of the main architects of Project 2025. After spending the entire presidential campaign denying that he had anything to do with Project 2025 and didn’t really know what it was, Trump is now following its dictates to the letter and on schedule. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all of Trump’s Executive Orders so far reflect the plans in the 900-page Project 2025.

MAGA is steamrolling through all the checks and balances very rapidly. They are in control of Congress and the judiciary, and Trump is intent on seizing all power for himself and his billionaire friends.

Speaking of whom, Elon Musk appeared via Big Brother screen at a rally for the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on January 25^th and encouraged them to be “proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.” He also said Germans have had “too much of a focus on past guilt.” This pronouncement came two days before Germany commemorated the 80^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Recent polls have shown that three-quarters of Germans think Musk’s involvement in German politics is “unacceptable,” and sixty-three percent think Musk doesn’t have a good understanding of German politics. But in advance of the parliamentary election in Germany on February 23^rd, the AfD party is in second place behind the Christian Democrats and ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. After Musk’s comments, Chancellor Scholz said Musk is “intervening in favor of right-wing politicians all over Europe, and this is really disgusting. And it is not good for the democratic development in all the European Union.”