The Donald Trump Score Card

Trump says he will offer $5 million 'Trump Gold Cards' as path to citizenship.


Trump says he will offer 'gold cards' for $5 million path to citizenship, replacing investor visas

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President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he plans to offer a “gold card” visa with a path to citizenship for $5 million, replacing a 35-year-old visa for investors.

“They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people, and we think it’s going to be extremely successful,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the “Trump Gold Card” would replace EB-5 visas in two weeks. EB-5s were created by Congress in 1990 to generate foreign investment and are available to people who spend about $1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people.

 

Potential firing of one million federal workers.


Trump 2nd term live updates: 1 million federal workers 'on the bubble' for firing

 

Trump sets stage for large-scale federal worker layoffs.


The Trump administration sets the stage for large-scale federal worker layoffs in a new memo

 

Trump posts bizarre AI promo video of his vision of Gaza as a wealthy tourist resort that includes a gold statue of him.


https://thehill.com/policy/international/5164530-donald-trump-ai-video-gaza-development/


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https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5309695/trump-gaza-video

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Faye Nemer, CEO and Founder of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) American Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn, Michigan, called the video "offensive and counterproductive to peace talks" in a statement to NPR.

Nemer, who says she voted for Trump in November, is calling on him to remove the video and issue a "reconciliatory statement."

 

The video Trump posted looks like a satire video that his critics would post to show his extreme self-centeredness.

 

At the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, Obama roasted Trump with a spoof image showing how the White House would look if Trump became president.

Now Trump is spoofing himself with his vision of how Gaza will be turned into a wealthy resort with Trump's name plastered everywhere and statues of him erected.

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Adverse reactions at town halls cause the GOP to put the brakes on them.


House Republicans hit the brakes on town halls after blowback over Trump's cuts

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"The town halls, and the rash of negative headlines, have been the first bit of public blowback for members who face voters next year. And the new reluctance to hold them indicates there are bubbling concerns about the impact the cuts could have on the GOP's chances of holding its thin majority in the House next year.

The viral nature of video clips spreading from one district to another means a bad confrontation in safe Republican territory could influence voters in battlegrounds."

 

Opinion | The Disturbing Question at the Heart of the Trump-Zelensky Drama

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"The drama going on between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raises one of the most disturbing questions I’ve ever had to ask about my own country: Are we being led by a dupe for Vladimir Putin — by someone ready to swallow whole the Russian president’s warped view of who started the war in Ukraine and how it must end? Or are we being led by a Mafia godfather, looking to carve up territory with Russia the way the heads of crime families operate? “I’ll take Greenland, and you can take Crimea. I’ll take Panama, and you can have the oil in the Arctic. And we’ll split the rare earths of Ukraine. It’s only fair.”

Either way, my fellow Americans and our friends abroad, for the next four years at least, the America you knew is over. The bedrock values, allies and truths America could always be counted upon to defend are now all in doubt — or for sale. Trump is not just thinking out of the box. He is thinking without a box, without any fidelity to truth or norms that animated America in the past."

 

The President Has No Constitutional Power of Impoundment, by Zachary S. Price - Yale Journal on Regulation

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"Instead of rallying all our European allies, doubling down on the military pressure on Putin and making the Russian leader “an offer he can’t refuse,” Trump did just the opposite. He divided us from our allies at the U.N. by refusing to join them in a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine — voting with the likes of North Korea — and began a lie-filled campaign to delegitimize Zelensky, not Putin."

 

The President Has No Constitutional Power of Impoundment, by Zachary S. Price - Yale Journal on Regulation

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This implicit understanding finally broke down when President Nixon overturned the apple cart by impounding gigantic sums for domestic programs that Congress supported and he did not. Unlike his predecessors, President Nixon squarely claimed constitutional authority for his actions. As he put it in a 1973 press conference, “[t]he constitutional right for the President of the United States to impound funds, and that is not to spend money, when the spending of money would mean either increasing prices [through inflation] or increasing taxes for all the people, that right is absolutely clear.”

The response was swift, and far from acquiescing to Nixon’s view, Congress forcefully repudiated it. In 1974, Congress enacted the Impoundment Control Act, which largely forbids impoundments. As modified by later amendments, this statute precludes the “rescission” (meaning cancellation) of budget authority without new legislation. It also bans even the “deferral” (meaning postponement) of spending unless the reasons for the delay are programmatic rather than policy-based. Specifically, it generally allows deferrals only within a single fiscal year and even then only “to provide for contingencies,” “to achieve savings made possible by or through changes in requirements or greater efficiency of operations,” or “as specifically provided by law.”

 

The President Has No Constitutional Power of Impoundment, by Zachary S. Price - Yale Journal on Regulation

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The upshot of these changes is to make most spending mandatory: Executive officials cannot cancel or even delay spending for which Congress has appropriated funds unless they are doing so on narrow programmatic grounds and follow specified reporting procedures. Once this law was in place, a continued practice of presidential impoundment could have reflected a claimed constitutional authority to defy congressional mandates. Yet no such practice developed. On the contrary, as Eloise Pasachoff recently observed, “[t]he Act has been generally successful in restricting illegal impoundments.” In other words, as Josh Chafetz has put it, “presidents have largely adhered to the act’s requirement to report impoundments and . . . have released funds when required to.”

 

Why Trump’s confusion about the Impoundment Control Act is a problem for him, for Congress and for everyday Americans - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

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"Given current Republican control of the presidency, House and Senate, these ICA procedures seem to provide a straightforward path to reduce federal spending in compliance with federal law. But while Trump has expressed support for using the similar, simple-majority reconciliation process for implementing policy proposals such as tax cuts that would increase the federal deficit, Trump has expressed no such support for the simple-majority rescission process for decreasing federal spending or the deferral process for achieving savings under the ICA. Instead, on the first day of his presidency Trump issued executive orders directing agencies to withhold congressionally appropriated funding for foreign aid, energy programs and sanctuary cities. And one week later, the president unilaterally “pause[d]” grants, loans, and other financial assistance, sparking a lawsuit by nonprofit organizations, public health leaders, and small businesses and fear and confusion from many recipients of federal funding. Why?"

 

Why Trump’s confusion about the Impoundment Control Act is a problem for him, for Congress and for everyday Americans - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

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"As Trump and his allies talk about plans to cut the federal budget through actions like shutting down the Department of Education and firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, Trump has championed plans to overturn the ICA, casting it as an enemy of a more efficient government. But the ICA presents no obstacle to Donald Trump’s promise to produce “massive savings,” as the law includes not one, but two ways for the administration to work with Congress to reduce government spending. First, the ICA allows the president to delay spending funds if the president reports the delay to Congress and the delay is authorized under the Act, which, among other reasons, permits deferrals if there are opportunities to achieve savings through greater efficiency. Or, if Trump determines that he does not need the full amount of money Congress has appropriated for a certain program, he can ask Congress to rescind the extra funds. After Trump sends such a request to Congress, each chamber can consider and pass a rescission bill under expedited—and for the Senate, filibuster-proof simple majority—procedures for the president’s signature."

 

From Energy Bills to Climate to Housing: How Trump’s Trillion Dollar Funding Cut Impacts Everyday Americans

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"Additionally, Trump’s actions may violate the U.S. Impoundment Control Act of 1974. While this Act allows some limited presidential control over funds, it explicitly prohibits a president from withholding funds, also known as “impoundment,” because he disagrees with the policy objectives related to the spending. The OMB’s memo directing funding cuts is doing precisely that.

Given all of this, it’s no surprise the courts are taking action. In one case, the states argue Trump’s executive actions are plainly illegal, where the judge is likely to issue a restraining order. In another, nonprofit groups who use federal funds have already secured a near-term stay of the administration’s actions. The legal and political landscape continues to change hour-by-hour."

 

How Elon Musk boosted false USAID conspiracy theories to shut down global aid

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Influencers often collaborate with their audiences in that way to build conspiracy theories, according to Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington, who was one of the earliest researchers to study online rumors.

“But now many of those influencers have immense power, both financial and political,” Starbird said. “Not only are they shaping the content and flow of those conspiracy theories, but [they are also] making hugely impactful decisions and shaping the structure of political institutions based upon them.”

 

Musk is a grand example. The world's wealthiest person, one who concocts and espouses truther narratives, and who's inside the White House with Trump everyday projecting his truther narratives onto the general public in a way that directly affects them, such as losing their jobs.

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/25/g-s1-50701/usaid-freeze-judge

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"In his order, Trump said the U.S. foreign aid industry and bureaucracy is "in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries."

Musk has — without evidence — called USAID "a viper's nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America," "evil" and "a criminal organization."

 

The people shredding the USA at the moment should hear this:

 

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/27/nx-s1-5310556/trump-immigration-crackdown-misperceptions

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"A Fox News camera crew embedded with ICE in Aurora, Colorado. But that operation yielded only about 30 arrests, far fewer than the hundred members of the Tren de Aragua gang that ICE leaders said they were targeting."