The onslaught of a racist, destructive and lethal government is now in full train (pt.2)
~ Louis Further ~
A lot has happened since Trump was inaugurated last month, so much that we are presenting this month’s update in two parts. Since The Trump/MAGA platform is built on a white-males-first agenda, racism and sexism are now of course very much to the fore.
Moves to disallow teaching of non-white histories and cultures in schools seem likely to come soon. The Department of Education (threatened with abolishment) has ended work to investigate censorship of books in schools. An email apparently sent to employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) working to fight the recent fires in California telling them to call immigrants “aliens”.
While Trump/MAGA are potentially assuring deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people who rely on aid from the US by closing USAID, they are favouring whites in South Africa. The Heritage Foundation has apparently compiled a watchlist of Black federal health workers.
Armed agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been going door to door in Colorado in attempts to gather up non-white neighbours for detention and deportation. And in Tennessee, raids took place where the officials were without ID, increasing the intimidation factor—particularly since several individuals have been found impersonating ICE personnel with a view to conducting similar abuse. The State Board of Education in Oklahoma is to introduce the requirement that parents report their immigration or citizenship status when enrolling their children in school.
Other measures may appear only performative, but will still have real consequences. Applications for passports must now indicate only ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ as possible genders. There are already instances of applications from those who have not complied being returned unprocessed. One of Trump’s first actions was to rescind a nearly 60-year-old executive order which disallows discriminatory actions by government contractors, and the Pentagon has since then banned Black History Month. And one of the most revolting displays by a MAGA legislator was when South Carolina Republican, Representative Nancy Mace, used an anti-trans slur in a House committee hearing. When called out on it, she loudly repeated it several times in defiance.
Environment
As promised, Trump also directed that his government deny climate science in as many ways as he can: both the US Department of Agriculture and Forest Service websites have removed references to the climate crisis in order to comply. A blatant death-wish dictates the MAGA attitude towards the environment: “Fossil fuel good; everything else bad”. So last week, a $5bn programme providing electric vehicle charging stations was suspended.
At the height of the climate collapse-induced fires in the Los Angeles area last month, instead of the usual pledge from the federal government, MAGA cult members blamed one of Trump’s arch-rivals, California governor Gavin Newsom (who Trump—hysterically funny—calls “Newscum”), and erroneously insisted that the Democrat legislatures in California was responsible for ‘poor forest management’, a canard that has been disproved multiple times by ecologists.
The only actions which Trump has taken have made things worse—as a punishment—by effectively draining reservoirs in the north of the state which contained water for agriculture in the event that the drought continues this summer. It remains unclear whether California will be allocated funds to cope with the aftermath of the fires in January. It seems possible that they will be withheld as a punishment for the state’s marginally greater policy of tolerance to non-whites – and for the fact that the fire chief in LA is gay.
The most absurd criticism of the way authorities in the state were handling such emergencies came when MAGA cultists carped at having sign language interpreters at press events. This was somehow unacceptable because hearing-impaired residents should “do their bit”; to pander to them was somehow weak—all while people were still dying. Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who was pivotal in trying to besmirch critical race theory, was quickly joined in this messaging by far right speaker Richard Hanania, who has contributed to white supremacist websites, saying that “the process has been captured by the disability lobby”.
January 2025 was the hottest January on record. Instead of addressing this catastrophe, Trump was having his cult members scour government contracts for billions of dollars in case they contain terms like ‘immigrant’ and ‘diversity’ and hence risk contradicting the aim for the US to be a whites-only country.
Health
Internationally, the US has halted funding for Palestinian Authority security services, signalling they would not be allowed to take over Gaza. On the other hand, observers in the Trump orbit affirm that his plan to ‘manage’ Gaza by expelling Palestinians and turning the territory into a high class holiday resort is serious. This would mean that ethnic cleansing is the official policy of the United States. The plan (received enthusiastically by the Israeli elite) is backed up with a government threat to withhold aid from Egypt and Jordan if they do not allow Palestinian refugees into their countries.
One of the most disturbing developments is the arrival as head of the country’s healthcare system of R. F. Kennedy Junior—a corrupt, unqualified anti-science sycophant. Untold residents could be in danger and possibly die as regulations are removed and best practices abandoned.
In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may well be abolished or have what meagre activities it takes to ‘protect’ US residents from pollution etc. In the meantime the Agency has withdrawn plans to regulate industrial poison in drinking water. In addition to withdrawing from the World Health Organisation, Trump has halted (weekly) scientific bulletins from the Centers for Disease Control (itself also under attack with staffing), including alerts relating to the incipient presence of Bird Flu. Most funding for medical research has been restricted or abolished.
Most of these orders are now under judicial review. The pivot for the immediate future is whether or not the administration complies with any court orders.
Top photo: Observatoire du jounralisme CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
