ANS -- lawsuit against the Trump regime’s foreign assistance freeze

Here is an email I got from Public Citizen.  It's what's happening with Trump's stoppage of payment for the work USAID has been doing.  

--Kim

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judge responds to our contempt of court motion

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  Public Citizen

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  Even more breaking news in our lawsuit against the Trump regime's foreign assistance freeze:
  
  Late yesterday afternoon, in response to our court motion, a federal judge agreed that the administration had not complied with his order requiring resumption of foreign aid funding and work — and instructed it to do so without further delay.
  
  Public Citizen will be back in court — in this case and others — in the days and weeks ahead.
  
  See our note from yesterday, copied below in case you missed it, for more details on this critical lawsuit against the Trump regime.
  
  ******
  
  There is breaking news in one of Public Citizen's lawsuits against the Trump regime.
  
  We filed a motion yesterday urging a federal judge to enforce his order — which has so far gone unheeded — requiring the administration to restart the foreign aid that Donald Trump froze by unlawful executive order on his first day back in office.
  
  As reported by MSNBC, Politico, Reuters, and others, we also called on the court to hold Trump officials who refused to follow the order in contempt.
  
  Here's a quick recap of this case so far:
  
  January 20
  On his first day back in office, Trump issues an executive order freezing almost all foreign assistance that the United States provides worldwide and ordering a stop to virtually all related work. The maneuver is a gross violation of both the Constitution's separation of powers and several federal statutes.
  
  February 10
  Public Citizen sues the Trump regime — on behalf of two organizations that receive funding from the federal government for overseas humanitarian work — to stop its illegal freeze and work stoppage.
  
  February 12
  We file a motion urging the court to take emergency action to stop the Trump regime's reckless and lawless actions while the case proceeds.
  
  February 13
  The judge grants our motion and issues a temporary restraining order requiring funding to be restarted and work to resume.
  
  February 18
  The administration boldly informs the court that it has not conformed to the temporary restraining order whatsoever, in flagrant defiance of the judge.
  
  February 19
  Public Citizen files a motion urging the court to enforce its temporary restraining order and to hold two Trump officials — Marco Rubio, Trump's Secretary of State, and Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect Trump installed as director of the obscure but critical Office of Management and Budget — in contempt of court.
  
  Here's what we said in a statement to national and international media outlets:
  
  The Trump regime's brazen noncompliance cannot be condoned. We are asking the court to order immediate compliance with the temporary restraining order by rescinding all suspensions, stop-work orders, and terminations issued since January 19, 2025. We are also asking the court to issue an order holding Marco Rubio and Russell Vought in civil contempt and imposing monetary penalties until they comply.
  
  This is one of seven lawsuits that Public Citizen has filed so far against the regime since Trump took the oath of office on January 20 for the second time. And there will be more.
  
  We are doing what we can to fight Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest — bringing to bear everything we've learned, all the connections we've made, all the experience we've developed, all the passion we've nurtured since our founding over half a century ago.

ANS -- February 20, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson

Here is another particularly interesting piece from Heather Cox Richardson.  It's about us all taking for granted what we have, and not having the imagination to see how bad it could be.  read it.  

--Kim

February 20, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson Feb 21   READ IN APP   On Monday, James Marriott of The Times, published in London, noted that the very stability and comfort of the post–World War II liberal order has permitted the seeds of its own destruction to flourish. A society with firm scientific and political guardrails that protect health and freedom, can sustain "an underbelly of madmen and extremists—medical sceptics, conspiracy types and anti-democratic fantasists." "Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable," Marriott writes. "Americans who parade around in amateur militia groups and brandish Nazi symbols do so partly because they are unable to conceive of what life would actually be like in a fascist state." Those who attack modern medicine cannot really comprehend a society without it. And, Marriott adds, those who are cheering the rise of autocracy in the United States "have no serious understanding of what it means to live under an autocratic government." Marriott notes that five Texas counties that make up one of the least vaccinated areas in the U.S. are gripped by a measles outbreak that has infected at least 58 people and hospitalized 13. It may be, Marriot writes, that "[t]he paradise of fools is coming to an end." The stability of the U.S.-backed international rules-based order apparently meant that few politicians could imagine that order ending. When President Trump threatened to take the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a key guarantor of global security, Congress responded by passing a law in December 2023 that prohibits a president from withdrawing the U.S. from NATO without the approval of two thirds of the Senate or separate legislation passed by Congress. Then-senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was a co-sponsor of the bill. Now, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio overseeing the dismantling of U.S. support for our allies and a shift toward Russia, Republican senators appear to be discombobulated. As Joe Perticone reported Tuesday in The Bulwark, there appears to be consensus in Congress that "Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, NATO is critical to European and global security, and the United States has led the common defense. But Republicans just backed a presidential candidate and voted to confirm several key cabinet officials who do not accept those realities. Confronted with the consequences of their support for Trump and votes for his nominees, Perticone notes, Republican lawmakers are apparently shocked. At home, the relative stability of American democracy in the late twentieth century allowed politicians to win office with the narrative that the government was stifling individualism, taking money from hardworking taxpayers to provide benefits to the undeserving. Although the actual size of the federal workforce has shrunk slightly in the last fifty years even while the U.S. population has grown by about 68%, the Republican Party insisted that the government was wasting tax dollars, usually on racial, religious, or gender minorities. That claim became an article of faith for MAGA voters and reliably turned them out to vote. Now, political scientist Adam Bonica's research shows that the firings at DOGE are "a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as…left-leaning." But the Trump administration's massive and random cuts to the federal workforce are revealing that the narrative of government waste does not line up with reality. According to Linda F. Hersey of Stars and Stripes, about one third of all federal workers are veterans, while veterans make up only about 5% of the civilian workforce. In fiscal year 2023, about 25% of the federal government's new hires were veterans, and they have been hit hard by the firings that cut people who were in their first year or two of service. "Let's call this what it is—it is a middle finger to our heroes and their lives of service," said Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) who sits on the Senate Veterans' Affairs and Armed Services committees and is herself a disabled veteran. Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported today that Republican lawmakers are panicked over this weekend's firings, concerned about the fired veterans and the firings of USDA and CDC employees who were dealing with the spreading outbreak of bird flu that is threatening the nation's poultry, cattle, house cats, and humans. Since Trump took office just a month ago, cuts to government spending have also hit Republican voters hard, and those hits look to be continuing. In June 2024, Ella Nilsen and Renée Rigdon of CNN reported that nearly 78% of the announced investments from the Inflation Reduction Act in initiatives that address climate change went to Republican congressional districts. Today the Financial Times noted that House Republicans are in the position of cutting the law that brought more than $130 billion to their districts. Now Republicans are talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental food programs, although Republican-dominated counties rely on those programs more than Democratic-dominated counties do. Yesterday, on the Fox News Channel, Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, praised the Department of Government Efficiency because it was "going to cut a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse." Lutnick told personality Jesse Watters, "You know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicare and Medicaid is wrong, so he's going to cut one trillion." The administration and the Department of Government Efficiency insist they are getting rid of "massive waste, fraud, and abuse" that they claim has lurked in the government for decades; House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Congress has not been able to make those cuts in the past because "the deep state has hidden it from us." In fact, neither the administration nor DOGE has produced evidence for their claims of cutting waste. Instead, fact-checkers have pointed out so many errors and exaggerations in their claims that observers are questioning what they're really doing. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, who ran the Social Security Administration under Biden, told Jane C. Timm of NBC News: "There's unelected people that are being given powers to go through and rummage through our personal data for reasons that nobody can quite figure out yet. It's not for efficiency." Indeed, federal government spending since Trump took office is actually higher than it's been in recent years. Finally, it appears that the strength and stability of American democracy have also meant that lawmakers somehow cannot really believe that the U.S. is falling into authoritarianism. Today, in a 51–49 vote, all but two Republican senators voted to confirm Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted with all the Democrats and Independents to oppose Patel's confirmation. In a 2023 book, Patel published a list of more than 50 current or former U.S. officials that he claims are members of the "deep state" and are a "dangerous threat to democracy." Opponents worry he will use the FBI to target those and other people he thinks are insufficiently loyal to Trump. The reason Americans created the government that the Trump administration is now dismantling was that in the 1930s, they knew very well the dangers of authoritarianism. On February 20, 1939, in honor of President George Washington's birthday, Nazis held a rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden. More than 20,000 people showed up for the "true Americanism" event, which was held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. Just two years later, Americans went to war against fascism. Over the next century they worked to build a liberal order, one that had strong scientific and political guardrails. — Notes: https://www.thetimes.com/article/b3bbc99e-e2dc-480e-92fc-bbd7c7c3abc0 https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-02-19/measles-cases-spread-in-texas-and-new-mexico-as-trump-purges-federal-health-workers https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/ https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-02-19/veterans-federal-firings-trump-musk-16888063.html https://www.kaine.senate.gov/in-the-news/congress-approves-bill-barring-presidents-from-unilaterally-exiting-nato https://substack.com/home/post/p-157392624 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/health/bird-flu-cats-michigan.html https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-cats-wild-coast-raw-recall-warnings/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/opinion/bird-flu-farmers-dairy.html https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/20/gop-lawmaker-doge-cut-panic-00205282 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/doge-dives-into-core-national-defense-and-data-systems-across-government https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/doge-days-musk-trump-tout-cuts-fraud-claims-are-debunked-rcna192217 https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/16/climate/clean-energy-investment-republicans/index.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-social-security-medicaid-cuts-howard-lutnick-b2701817.html https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/americans-government-aid-social-security-medicare-unemployment-34e92b19 https://apnews.com/article/medicaid-cuts-work-requirements-congress-republicans-90ec1119f1d95de067c76f79eec7fa87 "22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in Garden," The New York Times, February 21, 1939; Ryan Bort, "When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden," Rolling Stone, February 19, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/30/politics/kash-patel-critics-fbi-takeover/index.html Bluesky: carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lime3waaa22t volts.wtf/post/3limysb6gcc2g adambonica.bsky.social/post/3lil7yl2jvk26 Share You're currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. If you need help receiving Letters, changing your email address, or unsubscribing, please visit our Support FAQ. You can also submit a help request directly. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid   Like Comment Restack   © 2025 Heather Cox Richardson 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

ANS -- The democratic world will have to get along without America.

This was an article on Facebook.  Sad.  

--Kim

Sandy Moscato  · drSntpoosef3 1rcfa86grf268a9u m1l:a 9uu2ey5M1Ai0u00m1bF88at a  · 

Jonathan Cowans

srodotenpSa:0lah1r 3Pc uc0g7if121baag8F50t1Mu15  y20lmiirte82m0  · 

The democratic world will have to get along without America. It may even have to defend itself from it.

~ Andrew Coyne, The Globe and Mail, February 14, 2025

I wonder if we have underestimated the gravity of the situation the democratic world faces.

Even now, as the United States hurtles toward autocracy – the petty grotesqueries perhaps tell the story better than anything else: a reporter barred from the White House for not using the name "Gulf of America," President Donald Trump naming himself chair of the Kennedy Center by a "unanimous" vote of its board – the tendency is still to describe events in relatively conventional terms. For example, the "mistakes" that Mr. Trump is said to have made in his dealings with Vladimir Putin, of the United States as an "unreliable ally" under Mr. Trump, and so forth.

But that is not the situation we are now in. The policies on Ukraine announced, or rather confirmed this week by Mr. Trump and his Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth – peace talks without Ukraine; Ukraine locked out of NATO membership indefinitely; Russia keeps all territories gained since its illegal and unprovoked invasion, because, as Mr. Trump said, "they lost a lot of soldiers" taking them – are not, as described, irresponsible concessions to Russia.

They are not concessions at all. They are demands, aimed not at Russia but at Ukraine, and presented to it jointly by the United States of Russia and America. They are of a piece with the Trump administration's very clear signalling that it will not be bound by Article 5 of the NATO treaty – that the United States will not, as promised, come to Europe's defence should Russia broaden its attacks on it, but will, as Mr. Trump so memorably put it, let them do "whatever the hell they want."

That is not merely an abrogation of its treaty commitments, or an abdication of America's historic responsibilities, or even a declaration that the way is now open for other hostile powers to launch attacks on democratic states. The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships.

The United States that openly threatens to invade Panama or Denmark – or to annex Canada – has not just stepped outside international law, including the basic Westphalian proscription of attempts to alter borders by force. Neither does a country that launches trade wars on a different country every day, including countries with which it has longstanding free trade treaties, reveal a simple lack of commitment to a rules-based approach to international trade. It is engaged in an all-out assault on both. It has become an outlaw state.

And in this regard, too, it is aligning itself with the dictatorships. That is what dictatorships do. It is intrinsic to their nature. Just as they refuse to be bound by law internally – we are counting down the days to when the Trump administration defies its first court order – so they recognize no law in their dealings with other states. (Or rules of any kind: you'll have noticed they also cheat at sports. As does Mr. Trump.)

It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part, from the United States. Certainly it will have to be rebuilt without it.

Which means abandoning all attempts to propitiate Mr. Trump on military matters, in hopes of "keeping NATO together," that is with the United States in it. Not only will that do nothing to strengthen NATO, an organization to which Mr. Trump is viscerally opposed, but our desire to strike a deal only invites him to use it against us, as an instrument of blackmail.

We need to face some unpleasant facts. NATO, as a transatlantic democratic alliance, is dead. Henceforth the defence of Europe will be the responsibility of Europe. (And the defence of Canada? Wedged as we are between the United States and Russia, with the North an increasingly tempting prize? We better get some allies, fast.)

The same applies to the World Trade Organization, or any of the other instruments of international co-operation developed after the Second World War, in which the United States played such a constructive part: they will have to be reconstituted, de jure or de facto, without it. We will need new defence alignments, different trade arrangements, the works.

That is not our choice. That is America's, or at least the Trump administration's. The democratic world must therefore regard and treat it as it does the other non-democracies: not as an ally to be consulted but as an adversary to be contained.