NewsFlash

OK, maybe not.

Placeholder gone.

Trump says he'll delay implementation of the TikTok ban for 90 days. The Law states TikTik had until today (Jan 19) to shut down.  Trump is not President yet and cannot delay anything today. TikTok is still going back live today, putting the various venues that support it in violation of the law.

So:

1) The law was passed by Congress.

2) The Supreme Court has ruled it constitutional.

3) The President does NOT have the power to overturn a law. He can delay its implementation for 90 days and he can instruct the Justice Department to not prosecute violations, but as of today Trump is NOT the President and TikTok is in violation of the law.

So he'll be sworn in tomorrow, do his song-and-dance, and in 89 days "someone" will have bought it.  Wanna bet which obscenely rich guy who buys social media platforms steps up?

And what is this media kerfluffel distracting our collective attention from this time?

And now he thinks he can circumvent the Constitution openly.  Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution of the USA.  He's just issued an Executive Order ending it. Which he cannot do -  he does not have the authority.

A change to the Constitution requires ratification either by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress or by a convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures. It then must be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 out of 50) to become part of the Constitution.

Here we go again....

Bishop urges mercy for immigrants, Trump calls her “nasty”
By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump began his first full day in office attending a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday and got a sermon he may not have been expecting: an appeal to protect immigrants and respect gay rights.
The message drew a sharp response later from Trump, who described the minister as "nasty" and called the service "boring" and "uninspiring."
A day after declaring in his inauguration speech that there were only two genders in America and signing executive orders to crack down on immigrants, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded with Trump, from the pulpit, to show mercy on people who were "scared" of what is to come.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives," Budde said.
On Monday Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown, tasking the U.S. military with aiding border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum and taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on U.S. soil.  Budde made an impassioned case for immigrants.
"The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they ... may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals," she said.
"I ask you to have mercy. Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger."
Trump did not appear happy during the remarks and dismissed the sermon as "not too exciting" when asked for a reaction. But, perhaps because the event went viral on social media, the president weighed in again several hours later on his Truth Social platform with scathing words about Budde.
Calling her a "so-called Bishop", Trump described her as a "Radical Left hard line Trump hater" who owed the American public an apology.


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-attends-prayer-service-gets-an-earful-immigrants-lgbt-youth-2025-01-21/


Jan 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his campaign against diversity programs on Tuesday by pressuring the private sector to join the initiative, ordering aviation officials to review diversity hires and telling government DEI employees they would be placed on paid leave.
The measures come one day after Trump on his first day in office issued a series of executive orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, which attempt to promote opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people and other traditionally underrepresented groups.
Civil rights advocates have argued such programs are necessary to address longstanding inequities and structural racism.
In a new executive order issued on Tuesday, Trump revoked executive orders dating as far back as 1965 on environmental actions, equal employment opportunities and encouragement to federal contractors to achieve workforce balancing on race, gender and religion.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-place-federal-dei-staff-paid-leave-starting-wednesday-2025-01-22/


And then there's -

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-officials-ask-us-health-agencies-pause-external-communications-washington-2025-01-22/

WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing a dozen current and former officials and sources.  The instructions were delivered on Tuesday to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services, including officials at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health, the newspaper reported. The agencies had no immediate comment.

Time to get lackeys in to censor and substitute comment, I'd assume. Holy shades of invermectin and bleach, Batman!

Buckle up, this is going to be a rough ride for many.

I see he also reversed the cap on Medicare prescription drug prices. Good news for big Pharma.

Not unexpected.

He's alienating the senior citizen set. That could be a major mistake.

A bigger one is his ordering ICE to go into churches and places of worship to drag out immigrants seeking sanctuary there. That both violates a thousand years of custom AND is sacrilegious beyond words.  I am wondering if said ICE agents will be met by angry mobs of parishioners (as the equivalent met in the streets of Glasgow last year), or if people will just cower and look the other way while that goes down. (I hope it's not the latter, as it's only a small step farther to allowing concentration camps. Oh, wait. We already have concentration camps for illegal immigrants.) 

I'm not particularly into religion, and I'm no huge fan of the Catholic Church, but my initial gut reaction is to hope that a senior cleric will do a "Dagger John" on Trump.  Which would probably not be terribly productive, as even in a stalemate they'd probably just starve the people out, but might give the orange one a reality check. If he's capable of recognizing it. I guess we'll now see if there's a Catholic Bishop/Arch-Bishop/Cardinal with the stones to do it. Now if the Pope would do it, I would breathe a huge sigh of relief. But that won't happen.

If the orange one retaliates against the Church, it's game over given the number of Catholics in this country. Or modified anarchy as he tries to set the prods against the catholics. I'm not sure which is worse, really.

Every time I turn the TV news on now I end up with excruciating stomach pains within about five minutes, as the top stories are all about what Rump is doing. Prescription medication is only dulling it. So I've had to stop watching.

I had considered what to do if it came down to a situation where there was a viable protest. Would I go lock arms with protesters at the door of a church to keep large, armed young men in riot gear from going into it to drag off people whose only "crime" is wanting a better life?  If I participated I could end up in jail. Just an old woman in jail. Not much would come of that - the soldiers would brush past us and do their dirty work anyway. But I don't have a job to lose or anything like that. It would be unpleasant, but temporary. Unfortunately, it would also do nothing, in real terms, to make the protested situation any better.  I have discussed with the Daughter the bail process, though, as there is the remotest of possibilities she might need to know about it someday. [Cue the King Stalhman Bail Bonds theme here, for my SoCal friends.]

If I was religious (and not basically something between an atheist and a pagan) I'd pray or light a candle or something.  If I was a Satanist I'd be throwing curses.  Both options are as likely to do any good as me sitting in the slammer waiting to be a bit poorer for having the Daughter use my credit card to throw my bail. That is, no change to the situation at all. I really would like to think the Vatican will raise enough of a stink that it would blunt some of what is going on, but since they didn't during WW2 I hold minimal hope they will now. Although I do like the current Pope - anybody who used to be a bouncer at a bar can't be all bad! - he'll not be willing to risk annoying Rump and the Nazis.

Sometimes I wish I was famous for something, and that scores of people thought highly of me.  Then at least hearing what I'd done might get them to thinking and, a remote possibility in today's culture, doing something of their own.  But I'm not. I'm just an anonymous old lady who has read too much history and recognizes patterns more than most.

So the best I can do is wait for Spring, when I can go take my frustrations out on the soil with a turning fork and shovel. And not turn the news on anymore until then. I'll have to let my Daughter let me know if anything directly applicable is going on.

It's 80 years since they liberated Auschwitz:  a place full of the souls of dead Catholics, intellectuals, gays, Romas, Jews, and political enemies of the state. My father was one of the US Army soldiers who liberated Hadamar, the euthanasia hospital where they killed even their own soldiers once they were no longer useful, as well as their ill and infirm citizens (and children). That's the one they would have put me in, had I been alive there and then. 



https://adst.org/2014/11/a-soldier-uncovers-the-horrors-of-the-nazis-hadamar-camp/


It's all not so far away from what is starting in this country now.

https://time.com/7002003/donald-trump-disabled-americans-all-in-the-family/



God(s) help us all.

          

https://x.com/JBKSchlossberg/status/1884294384474046900

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/health/caroline-kennedy-rfk-jr-hhs-confirmation.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/01/28/rfk-jr-confirmation-caroline-kennedy-calls-her-cousin-a-predator/

Brainworm guy. Secretary of Health and Human Services.  His own family are disowning him. If the Senate repubs confirm him, there'll be hell to pay on the ground here.

Then again, a wife-beating, womanizing drunk who's never successfully led even a business and whose mother came out in public to say what a slug he is  is now in charge of the military.  So no outcome is too insane to end up occurring.

I wish I drank.

I wish I drank.

Never too late to start.

Wish I could! (But I cannot.)

He’s told the Senate that he has changed his mind on vaccines. Phew. Unless he is lying of course but Trump appointees don’t lie do they?

Right. He changed his mind. And will abide by whatever regulations there are - especially after he gets them changed.

Today's jollies are that the Orange One, after having stated that the recent air crash tragedy was due to DEI hires, slapped a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods and 10% on China.  A decent amount of our veg comes from Mexico, and Canada supplies us with electricity.  China supplies us with tons of cheap clothing, car parts, and electronics (etc.). [Since there will be a heck of a lot less hands picking the veg we DO grow, I'm glad I garden. Most people don't or can't. Time to pick up that spare monitor before the price kicks up. And I'm glad we have a bicycle.]

The stock market isn't happy. So goes my 403b.

Anyone of any competence at the FBI has been told to resign or they will be demoted. (As civil service they can't be arbitrarily fired.)  This is going well down into the ranks from top to bottom.  The Civil Service was created specifically to combat this type of maneuver in the 1800s....

All government employees have to remove gender pronouns from their email immediately.

People who voted for him are starting to howl on social media as his actions begin to bite them. Like they thought they were special and it wouldn't apply to them?  What the holy hell were they thinking? (If at all.)

And then there's this. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/31/nx-s1-5282274/trump-administration-purges-health-websites



Gotta go, time for another roofie. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has directed agency officials to review and remove content related to climate change from its public websites, according to internal emails obtained by ABC News.

The directive instructs web managers to identify, archive, or unpublish materials mentioning climate change by "no later than close of business this Friday," according to the emails.

In an email sent Thursday, USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee detailed the process, requiring staff to "identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change" and track related content in an attached Excel spreadsheet for review.

"OC will review the submitted materials and make determinations on next steps," Rhee wrote, referring to the department's Office of Communications.

A separate email sent to website managers at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) emphasized the urgency of the request.

"USDA and ARS OC are requesting you comply with the instructions below from USDA's Office of Communications," the email read, instructing ARS staff to submit their content audit by 3 p.m. ET Friday to meet the department's deadline.

USDA officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

[From ABC news website]

 More than 1,100 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency received notice this week that they were deemed to be on probationary status and warning they could be fired immediately, according to an email obtained by CNN. Probationary employees receiving the email have been working at the agency for less than a year. The emails began to go out late on Wednesday afternoon, according to an EPA union official. The same message will be sent to other agency workforces, a White House official said. Across the US government, the latest data shows there are more than 220,000 employees on probation.

“As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you pursuant to 5 CFR § 315.804,” the EPA email to probationary employees reads. “The process for probationary removal is that you receive a notice of termination, and your employment is ended immediately.”  “Each employee’s status will be determined individually,” the email adds. The email also spells out an appeals process employees can take to see if they are eligible for extra protection.

The approach is similar to how Elon Musk, now a key Trump adviser, handled layoffs when he bought Twitter — make a new email alias (in this case, notice@epa.gov) and then send mass termination letters to everyone on it. The US Office of Personnel Management declined to comment, and the White House and EPA did not respond to requests for additional comment.

 The EPA union official said these probationary employees aren’t the same as at-will employees; they have less protection than tenured employees, but they have rights to appeal.  The union official said EPA will have to make a finding as to every single probationary employee that is being let go – either that their performance is poor or that they had a disciplinary issue. Veterans and those with tenure have extra layers of protection. Attorneys who work at the EPA and AFGE, the union representing a large number of EPA employees, are counseling people who are probationary employees on how to respond to these emails and waiting to see what further action is taken.
....