Friends,
Since I offered you 10 reasons for modest optimism last week, discontent with the Trump-Musk regime has surged even further. America appears to be waking up. Hereās the latest evidence ā 10 more reasons for modest optimism.
1. Trumpās approval ratings continue to plummet.
The chief reason Trump was elected was to reduce the high costs of living ā especially food, housing, health care, and gas.
A new Pew poll shows these costs remain uppermost in Americansā minds. Sixty-three percent identify inflation as an overriding problem, and 67 percent say the same about the affordability of health care.
That same poll shows the public turning on Trump. The percent of those disapproving of Trumpās handling of the economy has risen to 53 percent (versus 45 percent who approve). Disapproval of his actions as president has risen to the same 53 percent versus 45 percent approval, which shows how essential economic performance is to the publicās assessment of presidents these days.
The Pew poll also shows 57 percent of the public believes that Trump āhas exceeded his presidential authority.ā By making the worldās richest person his hatchet man, Trump has made more vivid the role of money in politics. Hence, a record-high 72 percent now say a major problem is āthe role of money in politics.ā
Other polls show similar results. In the Post-Ipsos poll, significantly more Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (39 percent) than strongly approve of him (27 percent). Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN, and Gallup polls show Trumpās approval ratings plummeting (ranging from 44 percent to 47 percent).
In all of these polls, more Americans now disapprove of Trump than approve of him.
2. DOGE is running amusk.
DOGE looks more and more like a giant hoax. This week, reporters found that nearly 40 percent of the contracts DOGE claims to have canceled arenāt expected to save the government any money, according to the administrationās own data.
As a result, on Tuesday DOGE deleted all of the five biggest āsavingsā on its so-called āwall of receipts.ā The scale of its errors ā and the misunderstandings and poor quality control that appear to underlie them ā has raised questions about the effortās broader work, which has led to mass firings and cutbacks across the federal government.
DOGE has also had to reverse its firings. On Tuesday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins celebrated cuts to 875 contracts that he claimed would save nearly $2 billion. But when veterans learned that those contracts covered medical services, recruited doctors, and funded cancer programs as well as burial services for veterans, the outcry was so loud that on Wednesday the VA rescinded the ordered cuts.
After hundreds of nuclear weapons workers were abruptly fired, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire them.
After hundreds of scientists at the Food and Drug Administration were fired, theyāre being asked to return.
On Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that DOGE āaccidentally canceledā efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development to prevent the spread of Ebola. But Musk insisted the initiative was quickly restored.
Wrong. Current and former USAID officials say Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his DOGE allies moved last month to gut the global-assistance agency and freeze its outgoing payments. The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled, they added.
DOGE staff are resigning. On Tuesday, 21 federal civil service tech workers resigned from DOGE, writing in a joint resignation letter that they were quitting rather than help Musk ādismantle critical public services.ā
The staffers all worked for what was known as the U.S. Digital Service before it was absorbed by DOGE. Their ranks include data scientists, product managers, and engineers. According to the Associated Press, āall previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty toā¦
snowghoul
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
