WASHINGTON—An increasingly unhinged president of the United States, Donald Trump, formally notified Congress of his “declaration of war” against drug cartels this week to lay the groundwork for even more unconstitutional power grabs he is piling up by the day.
He says that his director of budget and management, Russell Voight, will use the government shut-down as rationale to start illegally firing thousands of additional federal workers as early as today.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries noted yesterday that “shutting down the government is something Trump has been doing ever since he got elected and he is doing it to save money for tax breaks for his buddies, the billionaires.”
The illegal mass firings come on top of Trump’s cancellation of billions of dollars in federal money already approved by Congress for critical infrastructure projects in 18 states that voted for Kamala Harris, another illegal and unconstitutional act in line with Voight’s stated desire to impose “maximum pain” on Trump’s political opponents. Voight, the author of the infamous extreme right Project 2025, which Trump disavowed when he was running for his second term, has now been given more power than both the U.S. House and Senate in determining what happens in the country.
Tells generals to “practice” warfare in cities
And that outrage follows Trump’s informing hundreds of generals in the U.S. military that they should be using illegal deployment of troops in U.S. cities to practice warfare on the people of the U.S.
Notice of his declaration of war against the drug cartels was sent to Congress in order to justify illegal sinking of ships in the Caribbean with no proof that the boats destroyed could even have made it to the U.S. even if they were carrying drugs.
Only Congress, not the president, can declare war and the move gives the president another excuse for doing just about whatever he wants whenever and wherever he desires.
By formally deeming his campaign against the cartels as an armed conflict he is planning, legal experts say, to claim extraordinary wartime powers on top of the ones he has already claimed.
He is trashing already approved programs in blue states in order to punish both lawmakers and the public in those states for opposing his policies. Among those trashed: $18 billion combined for two additional freight and Amtrak tunnels under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, an extension of the Second Avenue subway, and a $2.1 billion project to extend Chicago’s elevated Red Line from its current terminal at 95th Street to 130th Street on the far South Side.
Not coincidentally, the overwhelming majority of the cuts came in 18 states, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois, whose voters supported Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Trump in last year’s election. The cuts irked organized labor, especially transportation workers.
“We urge Congress to prioritize the safety of transportation systems, workers, and passengers by coming to a resolution that funds the federal government and works on behalf of American families,” the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department said.
Air Traffic controllers who are overworked and understaffed are being forced to work without pay, posing a safety threat to the flying public.
“Interruptions to crucial public services hurt not only the workers who provide them, but also the American people who rely on them.,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement.
Shock and fear escalated after Trump’s rambling, 73-minute incoherent speech in Quantico, Va., to 900 senior military officers. There, he declared he’d send troops permanently to Democratic-run cities—including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, D.C. and Los Angeles—ostensibly for “training.”
He told the officers to be prepared for that dispatch to the cities, and for stationing troops from a special Trump-created rapid deployment force. In the speech Trump also turned the military loose to respond any way they want, meaning gunfire, if protesters attacked ICE agents’ vehicles.
The net result of the cancellations and Trump’s rant was to prompt Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., and Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., to question Trump’s sanity.
“There is something genuinely wrong with this man,” Pritzker said. “It appears Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he is sending troops into cities, thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States. It is just, frankly, insane and I’m concerned for his health,” Pritzker said.
Something “genuinely wrong”
“There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked.”
Pritzker has said before he believes the president, 79, suffers from dementia, but the governor’s comments were the first time he said Trump should be removed. There were also calls, though not from Pritzker then, to unseat Trump after he unleashed the 1,600 of his supporters to trash the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to keep himself in the Oval Office.
Dean confronted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., about Trump’s speech and Johnson notably did not deny the president’s behavior was unhinged. He replied instead that her party “has crazy people, too.”
“The president is unhinged. He is unwell,” Dean told Johnson in an MSNBC video clip that has already drawn 2.3 million views. “A lot of folks on your side are too.” Dean replied, “Oh my god, please. That performance in front of the generals?”
When Johnson said he hadn’t seen Trump’s speech, Dean filled him in.
Meanwhile, using the excuse that New York and Chicago are engaging in racial preferences in the subway and tunnel construction contracts, Vought—who hates union workers and federal spending–gleefully trashed them.
The Chicago Red Line extension is “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting,” declared Vought, a prime author of Trump’s rabid right-wing platform, Project 2025. He had similar words about the Amtrak tunnels and the Second Avenue subway extension in New York.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Energy Department cancelled 300 projects worth at least $8 billion nationwide. Vought called them “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” A large majority are in states and congressional districts that swung Democratic last year.
And Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN the cancellations have been in the works for months—and that more will occur.
Besides the Chicago El and the two New York projects, other big-ticket cancellations include the Arches H2 LLC project stretching over multiple California congressional districts ($1.2 billion) and the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association project in Oregon, Washington and Montana ($1 billion), according to a list House Democrats released.
Separate releases from New York Democrats included the two Big Apple projects, while Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., released the news about the Red Line El.
The Arches project describes itself as “ARCHES is a public-private partnership organized to accelerate hydrogen projects on an industrial scale. ARCHES will build a more resilient, reliable, and independent energy system; provide home-grown fuels for the transportation system, including shipping and aviation; while improving public health and creating 220,000+ jobs.”
The Pacific Northwest project describes itself as “a partnership with labor, Tribal Nations, and public and private sector partners,” to “harness the Northwest’s innovative technology and abundant resources to create jobs and improve lives while unlocking untapped potential for the region’s industries, agriculture, transportation and infrastructure.”
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