Dispatches

TRUMP’S FBI PICK THREATENS CRITIC, WHO REFUSES TO BACK OFF. Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has threatened legal action against a former aide to ex-Vice President Mike Pence over her comments criticizing Patel, Zach Schonfeld reported at The Hill (12/5).

Patel, a fervent Trump loyalist, has said he would support the president-elect’s plans to seek retribution against perceived enemies. Appearing on a podcast last year, Patel talked about targeting what he called “conspirators not just in government, but in the media,” the Washington Post reported (12/1)

Olivia Troye, a former counterterrorism aide to Pence who has become a vocal critic of Trump, on MSNBC Dec. 2 said Patel would “lie about intelligence” and “lie about making things up on operations,” going as far to say he “put the lives of Navy SEALs at risk.”

In a letter sent to Troye’s lawyer that she posted on the social platform X, an attorney for Patel called the statements defamatory and demanded Troye retract them or face legal action.

“This is a complete fabrication, and you know it is false by virtue of your former position in the White House,” Jesse Binnall, Patel’s attorney, wrote in the letter.

Troye on X said she stands by her statements.

“This aligns with his threats against the media & political opponents, revealing how he might conduct himself if confirmed in the role,” she wrote. “I stand by my statements — my priority remains the safety & security of the American people.”

Troye’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid of Washington, D.C., replied in a letter to Patel’s lawyer:

“[Y]ou asked that Ms. Troye ‘confirm (her] intent to retract the statements within 5 business days of receipt” of your letter, and I respectfully comply. As you know, I am personally well aware of the impulsive nature fueled by your client’s appetite to sue individuals, as well as your firm’s proclivity to support such lawsuits. I am reminded of the Italian proverb that a ‘lawsuit is a fruit-tree planted in a lawyer’s garden’ and I can only imagine the number of apples and oranges growing in your backyard Whether they thrive or not, of course, is the question. Indeed, as you know, I have motions pending in two federal district courts seeking sanctions against your firm and your clients.”

Zaid concluded with a screenshot from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” of a French castle guard taunting English attackers: (The “I fart in your general direction!” scene.)

Presumably, that means “No.”

‘BUDAPEST MEMORANDUM,’ NOW LARGELY FORGOTTEN, SHAPED UKRAINE’S NIGHTMARE. The 30th anniversary of the agreement that led to Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for the agreement of Russia and western powers to respect its sovereignty, occurred Dec. 6 with Russia massing thousands of troops on Ukraine’s southern border, preparing for another massive and bloody invasion, Thom Hartmann noted at HartmannReport.com (12/6).

While countries around the world are trying to create and build nuclear weapons stockpiles (particularly China, Iran and North Korea) only one country in the history of the world has ever given up their nuclear hoard and unilaterally denuclearized their military: Ukraine.

And former President Bill Clinton — who brokered the deal during the second year of his presidency — feels terrible about it.

“I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons,” Clinton said in an April 2023 interview with the Irish media company RTÉ. “And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons.”

Clinton can be forgiven his naivete: in 1994 Russia had not yet been turned into a fascist dictatorship. Boris Yeltsin was president and Russians — and the world — were giddy about the possibility of the country becoming a western-style democracy.

The deal Clinton brokered is known as the “Budapest Memorandum of 1994,” an agreement worked out just three years after the Soviet Union dissolved and Ukraine had again become an independent nation.

Through much of that year the UK, US, and Russia met repeatedly with Ukraine at a venue in Budapest provided and blessed by the UN to try to secure and remove from Ukraine the world’s third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Ukraine, the largest country in Europe (about the size of Texas), had inherited from the old Soviet Union a massive collection of nukes, including almost two thousand SS-19 and SS-24 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), in silos scattered from border to border. Between 1991 and 1994, Ukraine owned the world’s third largest nuclear weapons arsenal.

Ukraine was reluctant to let go of their nukes. As Clinton told the Irish broadcaster:

“They were afraid to give them up because they thought that’s the only thing that protected them from an expansionist Russia.”

Ukraine was ultimately willing to give them up to advance world peace — particularly after being so traumatized by the meltdown of their Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 — so they entered the Budapest negotiations with Yeltsin and Clinton in good faith with only three simple demands.

— First, they wanted an absolute assurance from, at least, the US, UK and Russia that their territorial integrity would be both respected by those three nations and defended in the event of an invasion.

— Second, Ukraine wanted some financial help to safely dig the missiles out of their bunkers and transport them to Russia for decommissioning and destruction. The job would cost more than Ukraine’s economy could bear at the time.

— Third, they still had 15 functioning nuclear reactors operating in Ukraine, a legacy of the Soviet nuclear power program (which also provided some of the materials for those 1900 nukes), and the nuclear material in the warheads could be reprocessed into high-quality fuel for Ukraine’s power stations. They wanted an equivalent amount of nuclear fuel from the US, UK, and Russia so they could provide themselves with low-cost electricity for a few decades.

The 3 nations negotiating with Ukraine agreed to the terms.

“Ukraine, trusting our word that their borders would never be violated, gave up their nuclear weapons. All of them,” Hartmann wrote.

“We can all see how poorly that memorandum, signed in Budapest on December 5, 1994, has worked out, starting with the Obama administration’s failure to defend Ukraine when Russia invaded and took Crimea in 2014.

“So can children and civilian adults in Ukraine who are literally dying from Russian missiles and bombs as you read these words.”

As Clinton noted, “When it became convenient to him, President Putin broke [the agreement] and first took Crimea. And I feel terrible about it because Ukraine is a very important country.”

The editorial board of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, which had previously supported Trump in his repeated sucking up to Putin, noted in an opinion piece published Feb. 22, 2022:

“Don’t be surprised if Japan or South Korea seek their own nuclear deterrent. If Americans want to know why they should care about Ukraine, nuclear proliferation is one reason. Betrayal has consequences, as the world seems destined to learn again the hard way.”

On top of that, China is watching how this plays out and must be considering what might be the results of a similar effort to seize Taiwan, Hartmann noted.

“On this grim anniversary, as Putin’s campaign of murder, rape, and destruction has turned into genocide, America has both a moral and a legal obligation to defend Ukraine and honor the Budapest Memorandum. … The Budapest Memorandum is not just a broken promise to Ukraine; it’s a warning to the world that the price of appeasement is paid in blood — and the bill is still coming due,” Hartmann concluded.

TRUMP HAS MORE KOOKY PLANS FOR AMERICA. Donald Trump appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Dec. 8 and reiterated some of his most widely derided plans ahead of his inauguration, Oliver Willis noted at Daily Kos (10/9).

Trump said he would “most likely” pardon the people who have been convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol while trying to overturn the 2020 election he lost to President Joe Biden. He also reiterated his support for raising tariffs, even though history and economic experts have said doing so will raise costs for millions of families (Trump and his billionaire advisers and Cabinet will easily manage, however.)

Trump also called for jailing former Rep. Liz Cheney and other members of the congressional committee that investigated crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.

But Trump also made some comments that are disconnected from reality that didn’t generate as much widespread coverage.

On the issue of immigration, Trump once again claimed he would end birthright citizenship, which has been US law since 1868, and the adoption of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The law grants US citizenship to those born on US soil, or if at least one parent is a US citizen at the time of their birth.

Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he planned to abolish this right on the first day of his presidency. When Welker noted that it is a constitutional right, Trump said, “Well, we’re going to have to get a change, maybe have to go back to the people but we have to end it.”

Getting rid of this bedrock American right cannot be done via an executive order; a constitutional amendment first requires approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate and then must be ratified by three-fourths of the states, a process that usually takes years.

Related to immigration, Trump also said that he would not just push to deport undocumented immigrants, but entire families. Asked about families where children are legally in the US while living with undocumented parents, Trump said, “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is if you keep them together, and you have to send them all back.”

Trump isn’t even being consistent with his own actions. It was under his first presidency that U.S. immigration policy was changed so that families were separated at the border. The policy created enormous international and domestic criticism, and the Biden administration has spent the past four years trying to reunite those families.

When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump ran on a platform of repealing the Affordable Care Act and promised he would reveal a replacement. He never did. Asked by Welker about health care Dec. 8, Trump still had nothing to offer.

“We have the concepts of a plan that will be better,” Trump said, repeating the phrase that was widely mocked after most agreed he lost the presidential debate to Vice President Kamala Harris.

On foreign policy, Trump argued that Mexico and Canada are being subsidized by the United States. His conclusion, based on this claim?

“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state,” Trump said.

TRUMP STILL WANTS TO KILL ACA, WHICH COULD BACKFIRE. A strong majority of Americans believe the federal government should ensure everyone has health care coverage, according to a poll from Gallup released Dec. 9. And that finding stands in direct conflict with President-elect Donald Trump’s desire to replace the Affordable Care Act, which has nearly halved the uninsured rate since 2013, Alex Samuels noted at Daily Kos (10/9).

Gallup’s poll, conducted Nov. 6-20, found that 62% of U.S. adults think it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have coverage—the highest percentage that Gallup has registered for this position since 2007. It’s a stance held by 65% of independents and 32% of Republicans as well as 90% of Democrats.

Since Trump’s win in November, there have been questions about what may happen to the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Some congressional Republicans have floated weakening or repealing it. In October, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that if Trump won, Republicans would embark on a “massive reform” of the law. But once Trump disavowed the speaker’s remarks — that was “not President Trump’s policy position,” a Trump spokeswoman said at the time — Johnson changed his tune and complained that his words had been twisted.

Either way, eliminating the ACA would jeopardize coverage for more than 21 million Americans. It’s also bad politics, as 62% of Americans have a favorable view of the ACA specifically, according to an April poll from KFF. Indeed, it seems that once Americans stopped linking Barack Obama with his health care plan, they came around to the idea quicker.

With strong public support for the law, it makes sense Trump would distance himself from the idea of gutting the ACA. He and a Republican Congress already tried and failed to repeal the law in 2017, but after facing blowback from voters, Trump has kept mum on his specific plans for the ACA and what a replacement plan might look like.

In September, Trump said he had only “concepts of a plan” to address health care, but three months and a successful election later, that’s still all there seems to be. More recently, he went on “Meet the Press” and told NBC’s Kristen Welker that said concepts would be better than the ACA—but offered virtually no specifics on what his plan might look like.

“We have the biggest health care companies looking at it,” Trump said in the interview, which was released on Dec. 8. “We have doctors. We’re always looking. Because Obamacare stinks. It’s lousy. There are better answers.”

If Trump wants to avoid losing his House and Senate majorities, he should quickly figure out what these so-called better answers are. After all, health care issues were a central reason Democrats notched big gains in the 2018 midterm elections.

WANNA WORK FOR TRUMP? THERE’S A LOYALTY TEST FOR THAT. The unqualified crop of losers Donald Trump has so far picked to work in his administration likely believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that the riot at the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, was not an insurrection.

That’s according to The New York Times, which reported Dec. 9 that Trump administration appointees have been given a loyalty test in which they have to say, “what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen,” Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (10/9)

The Times reported that people who said President Biden legitimately won in 2020, or disavowed the violence on Jan. 6 were not chosen for jobs.

“The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question,” the Times reported.

A look at the people Trump has already picked for both Senate confirmable positions and other political roles bears this out.

For example, Trump nominated Kash Patel, a right winger who has vowed to seek revenge on reporters who correctly debunked Trump’s election lies, to lead the FBI—a position that’s not even open as the current director’s term doesn’t expire until 2027.

Trump also announced that Peter Navarro will be returning to his administration to help implement destructive tariffs. Navarro went to federal prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the now-defunct House Select Committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s beleaguered pick to lead the Department of Defense, said the people who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, were there because they “love freedom.”

And Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, wants to help Trump carry out plans to nix protections for career civil servants. This would allow Trump to fire federal employees who the administration does not believe are loyal enough to Trump.

The news is appalling, and a terrifying example of the coming descent into fascism the US is about to experience when Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20. But it’s not shocking, as Trump and his allies explicitly said they would require blind loyalty to Trump.

As far back as November 2023, Axios reported that Trump and his allies were “pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the US government if he wins in 2024.”

Trump’s own Agenda 47 also pledged that on his first day in office Trump would, “re-issue 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats.”

The Washington Post reported Dec. 8 that career federal employees are scrubbing their social media of any anti-Trump posts to try to protect themselves from being fired.

“There is shock and there is actual fear, and there is self censure in the sense that people are scared about retaliation,” Jesus Soriano, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, told the Post.

REPUBLICANS FLOAT SOCIAL SECURITY CUTS AFTER MUSK VISITS CAPITOL HILL. Republican lawmakers on Dec. 5 signaled a willingness to target Social Security and other mandatory programs after meeting with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire pair President-elect Donald Trump chose to lead a new commission tasked with slashing federal spending and regulations, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (10/6).

Though the GOP’s 2024 platform pledged to shield Social Security, the party has reverted to its long-held position in the weeks since Trump’s election victory, with some lawmakers openly attacking the program while others suggest cuts more subtly by stressing the supposed need for “hard decisions” to shore up its finances. (Progressives argue Social Security’s solvency can be guaranteed for decades to come by requiring the rich to contribute more to the program, a proposal Republicans oppose.)

On Dec. 5, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) emerged from a meeting with Musk and Ramaswamy with the message that “nothing is sacrosanct.”

“They’re going to put everything on the table,” said Norman, one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

After airing Norman’s remarks, Fox Business reported that Musk and Ramaswamy told lawmakers that no federal program is safe from cuts, “and that includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”

NBC News congressional correspondent Julie Tsirkin said Dec. 5 that after meeting with Musk, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.)—who was recently elected Senate majority leader for the upcoming Congress—told her that “perhaps mandatory programs are areas that they’re looking to make cuts in, like Social Security, for example.”

“But again, no specifics were laid out there,” Tsirkin added.

Thune has previously voiced support for raising Social Security’s retirement age, a change that would cut benefits across the board.

WILL TRUMP TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH BLOW A HOLE IN THE ‘ROCK SOLID LABOR MARKET’ LEFT BY BIDEN? Job figures released Dec. 6 showed that the US labor market rebounded strongly in November following a storm-ravaged October, with the economy adding 227,000 jobs and average hourly earnings rising by a higher-than-expected 0.4%.

But observers warned that the economic agenda of President-elect Donald Trump and the incoming Republican Congress—particularly the massive tax cut package they plan to ram through early next year—could undermine job market progress made under the Biden administration in the aftermath of the COVIF-19 crisis, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (12/6).

“The Biden administration is handing off a rock-solid labor market after their strategic investments strengthened our economy and ushered in the fastest recession recovery on record,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. “President-elect Trump would do well to continue to invest in the workers and communities that have powered this resilience.”

“But if he pursues trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and implements the proposals to slash public investments that people like [Elon] Musk have championed,” Owens added, “the labor market will surely deteriorate and workers will suffer the consequences of these choices.”

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, similarly warned that “while Democrats delivered a historic recovery with millions of new jobs under President Biden, Donald Trump and his far-right allies want to take us backward.”

“Trump’s promises are nothing but a con,” said Boyle. “He’s pushing middle-class tax hikes while handing massive breaks to his billionaire donors, just like he’s done before. Families like mine know the truth: Trump would sell out millions of workers in a heartbeat to line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. House Democrats won’t stand by while Trump sabotages our economy. We’ll fight to protect the progress we’ve made and ensure working families continue to come first.”

The US economy has added an average of 173,000 jobs monthly over the past three months, Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould noted in an analysis of the new Labor Department figures.

“Nominal wage growth held steady at 4.0% over the year,” Gould observed. “This rate is in line with the pace of productivity improvement over the last year and a stubborn low labor share of corporate sector income. Importantly, it means that real average wages continue to rise as they have the last 18 months.”

The new data came as congressional Republicans and Trump’s billionaire-dominated transition team and Cabinet choices continued to map out their agenda for the coming year, with tax cuts at the center.

“Their top objective is to extend the 2017 Trump tax law and prevent $3.3 trillion in tax breaks from expiring at the end of 2025,” NBC News reported, detailing GOP plans to pass a “huge party-line bill” via the filibuster-proof reconciliation process.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis published Dec. 4 detailed how an extension of soon-to-expire provisions of the 2017 tax law—a measure that disproportionately benefited the rich—would shrink the U.S. economy, bolstering concerns about the potentially damaging impacts of the Trump-GOP agenda.

Prior to the November election, the research firm Moody’s Analytics warned that a Republican sweep would likely mean “the economy suffers a recession beginning in mid-2025,” resulting in 3.2 million fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate by the end of Trump’s four-year term.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2025

Populist.com