Rita's Spur to Action

When Biden was in office, it was largely agreed that the economy was doing well, that America’s economy flourished and that under his administration, “the U.S. had added 16 million jobs, unemployment was at its lowest rate in 50 years, real wages for the bottom 80% of Americans were increasing, and inflation levels had come down almost to the Federal Reserve’s target from their highs during the post-shutdown shocks.”

In three months, Trump has managed to turn all of this around.

He has,”…trashe[d] human rights, undermine[d] our alliances, threaten[ed] the independence of our universities and the press, stymie[d] progress on climate change, decimate[d] our civil service, shaft[ed] the poor, harm[ed] the working class, worsen[ed] the economy, and [left] much of our government in tatters.”

Economists expect the confusion and uncertainty of Trump’s tariffs to hurt growth more broadly in the second quarter of 2025 as container ships from China stop arriving in the U.S. in early to mid-May, about a month after Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” imposed a 145% tariff on goods from that country. 

And this is only his first four months in office.

From Robert Reich…

Fernando Rodriguez Jr, a Trump appointed U.S. district court judge in Texas, said “The President cannot summarily declare that a foreign nation or government has threatened or perpetrated an invasion or predatory incursion of the United States, followed by the identification of the alien enemies subject to detention or removal.” This is the first federal court to permanently invalidate the Trump regime’s legal justification for using the Act, and a giant middle finger to the Trump regime’s efforts to centralize power in White House.

From Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian…

Trump’s instinct is to deepen and accelerate his retribution and propaganda. But the damage is already done, and the worst is ahead. In the shortest disorder possible, he has created the recessionary stagflation to come, which by its very nature is sticky and difficult to undo. He is angry at the Fed for not rescuing him by cutting interest rates. But if the Fed followed his dictate, inflation would only increase more. Trump’s frustration is that he is trapped within a failure of his own making. Even if he were to reverse himself overnight, it is too late. The effects of his uncertainty and instability have delivered a body blow to both supply and demand, shattered consumer confidence, upset the bond market, undermined the dollar, forced other nations to reorganize global trade and empowered China above all.

The congress and the senate are elected by the people to represent the people, NOT to kiss the ring of Trump or anyone else.

Although they are elected, they actually are being paid by the citizens of America by Americans’ tax money.

Trump recently took in millions, if not billions of dollars in personal money.

It really is the duty of the congress to look into this and decide whether this is proper behavior for the President of the United States to make personal money while in office.

Trump’s recent personal financial gain was made by using the office of the Presidency of the United States to line his own pocket and those of his family.

Once again, the congress and the senate have sat by and allowed this criminal President to enhance his own wealth by milking American citizens who are willing to support his criminal activity.

America has lost the respect of the world and if this man is allowed to continue he will destroy every value that has made America great.


NOTES: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/technology/trump-private-dinner-crypto-memecoin.html

Trump presents himself as a great businessman and is making horrendous deals right, left, and center for the United States of America.

Here is the history of Trump, the oh, so successful New York businessman: He has declared bankruptcy six times. Robert O’Harrow of the Washington Post discussed Trump’s Taj Mahal opening in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin.” In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.

PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.

Interestingly enough, Trump and his family seem always to have pocketed or benefited financially from these bankruptcies.

Even if Trump is right to renegotiate our trade deals around the world, he cannot be right by destroying our peaceful relationships with every country.

He is running this us, the United States of America, as he ran all of his businesses, into the ground.

What has happened to decency in America? 

What has happened to the America that went to war against Hitler and his illegal deportations and killing of 6 million people in World War II?

How is it possible that Americans are not rising up en masse to stop the illegal deportation of American citizens or people under legal protected status or anyone for that matter without due process?

Of course we don’t want criminals in the Country, but due process has been one of the features of American decency since this democracy began. 

Imagine a country where the President has the right to virtually kidnap and deport anyone for no reason with absolutely no regard to the law.

This is not democracy, this is autocracy. This is Hitler, 1933. This is Trump, today.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant, who fled gang violence, obtained legal status in 2019 to become a U.S. citizen, has now been illegally deported by the Trump administration with no cause, no reason. Since his deportation, the same administration, led by Donald J. Trump, has refused a court order to bring him back from his illegal deportation.

The President has committed a crime.

He has abused his executive power and violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which give citizens of the country, with or without legal status, the constitutional right to due process. Abrego Garcia was initially deported by the Trump administration due to their belief that he has associations with the “terrorist” Salvadoran gang, MS-13. However, those claims have been proved false; “Abrego Garcia had no criminal record, and the Trump administration [has since] admitted his removal was due to an ‘administrative error.’” 

Trump has exceeded his executive powers. He should use those same powers to bring the man back from the mega prison in which he’s being illegally detained, and make amends to him and his family.

The administration has violated the law, the court, and the rights of the American people. The crime needs to be more expeditiously investigated. Speed up the courts. Save this man’s life. 

Bravo to the Sen. Chris Van Hollen for traveling down to El Salvador to not only see how he can bring Abrego Garcia back to America, but also to simply see how he’s doing. Hopefully, this puts pressure on other senators to follow suit. 

Every day this country looks more like Hitler’s Germany. Is this acceptable to the people of the United States of America? Stand up, America, and fight before it’s too late!

Notes:

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5364887/kilmar-abrego-garcia-trump-court-order

https://substack.com/app?utm_campaign=email-read-in-app&utm_source=email

It is clear Trump committed TREASON against the United States when he sat by and encouraged his followers to attack the capitol on January 6th, 2021.

What is unclear is why he has not been prosecuted for treason.

President Trump today and every day is working toward the destruction of the United States.

One of Trump’s first actions for his second administration was to pardon all the rioters who committed treason from any sentencing.

It is clear that Trump had to become President of the United States in order to avoid prosecution and a jail sentence.

If the Congress and the Senate of this Country did their job properly this President would be impeached.

If you don’t believe Trump’s single aim is to destroy America, its democracy, and all of its public services, then check out the following: 

One of the core ways they are going about revolutionizing the government is through the work done by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.” DOGE employees, most of whom have no government experience or qualifications for such work, have been going through data systems, shutting down programs and, in some cases, whole agencies, all under the guise of eliminating excessive government spending. Their slash and burn program is depleting government agencies of thousands of necessary federal workers. In addition, “as Jacob Bogage at the Washington Post reported on March 22, billionaire Elon Musk’s [DOGE] has cost the government $500 billion [between severance packages, backpay, legal fees, etc].”

Musk also calls people who benefit from government programs the “parasite class.” Presumably that’s why he’s eager to cut back Medicaid. But Medicaid’s beneficiaries aren’t parasites. Half of them are children.

That he views public servants as his enemy and the people who benefit from public programs as “parasites” tells you all you need to know about Musk.

Additional agencies that DOGE has combed through and gutted include: the Department of Education, Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Treasury Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the list continues to grow every day.

“For forty years, Republican politicians could win elections by insisting that government spending redistributed wealth from hardworking taxpayers to the undeserving because they did not entirely purge the federal programs that their own voters liked. Now Trump, Musk, and the Republicans are purging funds [from] programs his supporters care about—and threatening to throw the country into an economic tailspin that will badly hurt Republican-dominated states.”

It is out of sheer ignorance and revenge that Trump has encouraged this dismantling of the social system that has been the envy of the world and that has truly made America great. 

Notes:

https://robertreich.substack.com

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Donald J. Trump is a wannabe dictator. The first thing that dictators do is to destroy the educational system of the Country that they govern.

Since most dictators, like Trump himself, are only semi-literate, they require an illiterate public over whom they can wield their ill-gotten power.

The United States educational system has been ranked as 6th in Reading, 12th in Science, and 28th in Math by the OECD.

It is clear that only an uneducated public could have voted for Donald Trump.

Probably the only book he’s ever read in his life is Mein Kampf and his only aspiration in life is to be a total dictator.

His indiscriminate withholding of funds in order to cause fear and intimidation across Universities nationwide is evidence of his dictatorial plan to control the minds of Americans for the greater glory of Donald J. Trump himself.

He has clearly committed conspiracy against the United States and has subsequently forgiven all of his co-conspirators.

It is perfectly clear that it is Trump’s aim to reduce the level of education in America and bolster the illiterate portion of the population who supported him to begin with.

Only We the People of America can save our Country by urging our congressional representatives to unite, whether Democrat or Republican, in an effort to stop this maniac from totally destroying our Nation.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what party you belong to, this man is a despot.

Notes:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-shame-of-columbia-university

Anyone who lived through the second World War will recognize the ear marks of a rising dictator. WWII was fought to contain Hitler. He had destroyed the German democracy and the Weimar constitution by forcibly asserting himself as its chancellor. He then went on to conquer the rest of Europe, and was in the process of taking over England and the United States of America.

It is the misfortune of America and the result of an uneducated public that we’ve, again, elected Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. And his true motives become clear by looking at his most recent lawless evacuation of a large group of American residents – residents whom Trump declared to be “enemy combatants” and shipped off to a “concentration camp” in El Salvador. Sound familiar?

Obviously, none of us want to house enemies within our midst. However, it is not within the province of the president or any other official of the executive branch to remove these people, or anyone, without due process. This is what makes America, America. “If members of the executive branch are allowed to issue truth claims that have the consequence that human beings [forcibly] leave the United States, we are in a dictatorship. If we accept that the executive branch can simply deport anyone they call a ‘foreign alien terrorist,’ then none of us has any rights.”

Trump has become judge and jury. It is Trump who has alienated NATO and Canada (our closest neighbor). It is Trump who befriends Putin, the enemy of the people. America beware. Trump is on a mission to define,” …what is true and what is false and who is human and who is not.”

Plainly speaking, President Trump is sewing the seeds for a dictatorial regime that will destroy the America that we’ve known.

Notes:

https://substack.com/app?utm_campaign=email-read-in-app&utm_source=email