The Donald Trump Score Card

Farmers feeling weight of Trump policies with shutdown of aid
By William Brangham and Karina Cuevas
Feb 17, 2025 6:35 PM EST

Farmers feeling weight of Trump policies with shutdown of aid


YouTube video:

 

Visualizing Over $1 Trillion in Wealth at Trump’s Inauguration

excerpt:

Elon Musk $426 billion Tesla, SpaceX
Jeff Bezos $247 billion Amazon
Mark Zuckerberg $217 billion Facebook
Bernard Arnault $191 billion LVMH
Sergey Brin $157 billion Google
Mukesh Ambani $93 billion Reliance Industries
Miriam Adelson $32 billion Casinos
Rupert Murdoch $22 billion Fox News, The Wall Street Journal
Tim Cook $2.2 billion Apple (CEO)
Sundar Pichai $1.3 billion Alphabet (CEO)
Sam Altman $1.1 billion OpenAI (CEO)

 

Zelensky says Trump meeting with Putin in Saudi Arabia isn't the solution to Putin's war on Ukraine.


Trump blasted by Zelensky for trying to 'please' Putin and makes Europe warning

 

Republicans consider requiring people to work to receive Medicaid.

They are looking for money to pay for Trump's extension of corporate tax cuts that expire in 2025.


Republicans consider cuts and work requirements for Medicaid, jeopardizing care for millions

excerpt:

"To whittle down the budget, the GOP-controlled Congress is eyeing work requirements for Medicaid. It’s also considering paying a shrunken, fixed rate to states. All told, over the next decade, Republican lawmakers could try to siphon billions of dollars from the nearly-free health care coverage offered to the poorest Americans."

 

Trump blames Zelensky for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.


Trump 2nd term live updates: Trump falsely claims Ukraine started war with Russia

excerpt:

When asked about Ukraine not being a part of those discussions, Trump criticized Zelenskyy's leadership.

"Well, you been there for three years," he said of Zelenskyy. "You should have ended it three years -- you should have never started it," he said, appearing to falsely blame Ukraine for the war. "You could have made a deal."

 

Musk slashes NIH and NSF


Trump Administration Live Updates: News on Elon Musk, Russia Peace Talks and RFK Jr.

excerpt:

Federal turmoil: The Trump administration fired 168 probationary workers at the National Science Foundation, a spokesman. That cuts more than 10 percent of the work force at the agency, which along with the National Institutes of Health is a cornerstone of public research funding in the United States. Separately, Jim Jones, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division, resigned on Monday, citing what he called “indiscriminate” layoffs that would make it “fruitless for him to continue.”

 

Judge sides with Musk.


Trump Administration Live Updates: News on Elon Musk, Russia Peace Talks and RFK Jr.

excerpt:

A federal judge in Washington declined to grant a request by 14 state attorneys general to temporarily bar Elon Musk and his associates from accessing data at seven federal agencies and moving forward with their efforts to slash the federal work force. The judge said the states had not shown specific examples of how the work of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency could cause the states irreparable harm. Read more ›

 

NIH crippled by Trump.


Science under siege: Trump cuts threaten to undermine decades of research

excerpt:

“This is simply the end.”

That was the five-word message that Rick Huganir, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, received from a colleague just before 6 p.m. two Fridays ago, with news that would send a wave of panic through the scientific community.

When Huganir clicked on the link in the email, from fellow JHU neuroscientist Alex Kolodkin, he saw a new National Institutes of Health policy designed to slash federal spending on the indirect costs that keep universities and research institutes operating, including for new equipment, maintenance, utilities and support staff.

“Am I reading this right 15%??” Huganir wrote back in disbelief, suddenly worried the cut could stall 25 years of work.

 

Sources at NASA say 10% of its workforce has been laid off because of Trump.


Trump 2nd term live updates: Trump falsely claims Ukraine started war with Russia

 

Musk wants to see if the gold reserves are still at Fort Knox.


Trump 2nd term live updates: Trump falsely claims Ukraine started war with Russia

excerpt:

"As Elon Musk's DOGE continues to target federal agencies like the Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service, the world's richest man has now set his sights on U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox.

In recent days, Musk repeatedly posted about wanting to "make sure" the gold is still at the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, which holds approximately 147.3 million ounces of gold, according to the U.S. Mint."

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/planet...ump-ignore-congress-spending-laws-impoundment

excerpt:

"A constitutional conflict is brewing over Congress' power of the purse and whether the president can refuse to spend what Congress has directed him to spend.

Since taking office, the Trump administration — along with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — has been seeking to cut federal spending, reduce workforce levels and dismantle programs and bureaucracies without going through the legislative process. They're instead claiming that the president has the power to unilaterally override the existing spending plans set by Congress."

 

Trump wants to have the power of Congress.


https://www.npr.org/sections/planet...ump-ignore-congress-spending-laws-impoundment

excerpt:

"Even more telling, in 2023, when he was running for reelection, Donald Trump released a campaign video in which he outlined his view that the president should have a special power to slash spending known as "impoundment," or the power to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

 

Trump has gone woke.


Opinion | Trump Is Going Woke

excerpt:

And how did Trump propose to address the emergency he declared? By doubling down on fossil fuels, coupled with freezing Biden-era government incentives for wind energy, putting in doubt incentives for solar and boasting of building huge, electricity-guzzling data centers for A.I.

That’s not an ecosystem. That’s a right-wing woke energy mess.

Hello? Wind and solar together today provide more than 14 percent of the country’s electricity generation.

I can’t better describe how foolish this is than how my Times newsroom colleagues wrote about it last week: “Trump declared that the United States is facing an energy emergency, yet wants to block thousands of megawatts of planned wind projects that could power homes and businesses. He talks about strengthening American manufacturing but plans to withdraw assistance from the electric vehicle industry, which has invested billions of dollars in new factories across the United States.”

As Carl Pope, a former chairman of the Sierra Club and the author, with Michael Bloomberg, of “Climate of Hope,” put it, “It’s like ringing a fire alarm and then laying off the fire department.”

 

Trump, a populist president, is flanked by tech billionaires at his inauguration

excerpt:

"But the inaugural display highlights the unusually direct role the world’s wealthiest people will likely have in the new administration. In his outgoing address, Biden warned that the U.S. was becoming an oligarchy of tech billionaires wielding dangerous levels of power and influence on the nation."

 

Trump, a populist president, is flanked by tech billionaires at his inauguration

excerpt:

"NEW YORK (AP) — Some of the most exclusive seats at President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday were reserved for powerful tech CEOs who also happen to be among the world’s richest men.

That’s a shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a champion of the working class. Seats so close to the president are usually reserved for the president’s family, past presidents and other honored guests.

Photos show the tech CEOs mingling with several of Trump’s picks for the Cabinet, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

In one image, Rubio looks on from the background, facing a lineup of tech’s wealthiest leaders. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, stand beside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest advisers. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk also runs Tesla, SpaceX and the social platform X."

 

Trump played golf a week after being inaugurated when he said he wouldn't have time for golf.


Trump mocked for hitting the golf course — just a week after being sworn in again

 

Trump's new board members for Kennedy Center.


How Trump is reshaping the Kennedy Center, moving away from "woke culture" - CBS News

excerpt:

New members of the board included White House officials, family members of administration officials, donors and their spouses, according to the Kennedy Center's website:

Second lady of the United States Usha Vance
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles
Wiles' mother, Cheri Summerall
White House deputy chief of staff for national security Dan Scavino
White House director of presidential personnel Sergio Gor
Allison Lutnick, wife of commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick
Pamela Gross, former White House adviser to the first lady
Donor Patricia Duggan
Emily May Fanjul, wife of Trump donor and sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul
The wives of New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft and New York Yankees President Randy Levine

 

Wrecking ball: Trump’s war on ‘woke’ marks US society’s plunge into ‘dark times’

excerpt:

"Dante King, a DEI expert, speaker and author, said: “Donald Trump has a platform. He has prioritised heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender white men and he is concerned with disenfranchising anyone who does not live up to or behaves based on the ideology, the ideals, the cultural customs and practices of white men.”

The left embraced movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. “Cancel culture” and transgender rights became new battlegrounds. An entire rightwing ecosystem thrived on not what they are for but what they are against. Terms such as wokeness, CRT and DEI were vilified to become rallying cries for rightwing mobilisation, portraying Democrats as out of touch with everyday concerns."

 

Opinion | Trump Is Going Woke

excerpt:

"I understand that Donald Trump was elected to better manage our borders and curb left-wing wokeism. But have no illusions: Trump’s right-wing wokeism — impugning electric vehicles and renewable energy because they don’t conform to MAGA ideology and aren’t manly enough — is as devoid of common sense and not remotely in the national interest as any left-wing cultural wokeism."

 

How Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump shook up the world in a week

excerpt:

"It began with the Putin-Trump telephone conversation on 12 February and their presidential pledges to kickstart relations.

It continued with the Munich Security Conference and a schism between Europe and America.

Next stop Saudi Arabia for the Russia-US talks: the first high-level in-person contacts between the two countries since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It is a week that has upended traditional alliances, left Europe and Ukraine scrambling to respond, raised fears for European security and put Russia where it wants to be: at the top table of global politics, without having made any concessions to get there."