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Trump’s Freeze Was a Brazen, Unlawful Attempt to Steal Our Tax Dollars
Whichever way this pans out, one thing is clear: This administration is trying every tactic—legal or otherwise—to fund its planned massive tax handout to its billionaire backers.
Jan 30, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump caused panic and chaos when his Office on Management and Budget ordered a sweeping freeze on federal funding for programs American families rely on.
The backlash was fast and fierce as programs ranging from Medicaid to Meals on Wheels to cancer research were impacted. By the end of the day, a federal judge had temporarily “frozen the freeze”—and the following day, the administration reluctantly revoked it.
But make no mistake: This was an attempt to force unconstitutional cuts to vital services that our taxes paid for. Programs that help Americans get food, housing, education, healthcare, and more have been plunged into uncertainty. And the administration’s efforts to use whatever means necessary to line their own pockets by picking ours are just beginning.
The White House will keep pushing the envelope to grab as much power as they can to fleece working people and enrich its billionaire backers.
In this case, the administration told agencies their funding would be frozen until they could prove they were “supporting activities consistent with the president’s policies and requirements”—and not “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies,” whatever that means.
A sloppy, two-page memo from the Office on Management and Budget exempted Social Security and Medicare in a footnote, along with “assistance directly to individuals.” But much of that assistance goes through programs or nonprofits that reported disruptions after the memo came out.
All 50 state Medicaid offices, for example, immediately reported losing access to the federal Medicaid payment portal. Portals for Head Start, housing programs, after-school programs, some charter schools, and Special Olympics funding were also disrupted.
First Focus on Children estimated that over $300 billion in funding for children’s well-being was at stake. And a spokesperson for Meals on Wheels told HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney that seniors were panicked “not knowing where their next meals will come from.”
All told, over 2,000 federal programs were put at risk. Alongside those for food, healthcare, education, and housing, experts worried domestic abuse shelters, suicide prevention services, disaster relief, small business funding, childcare, and much, much more could also be impacted.
These programs are lifelines for families—and cuts to them are enormously unpopular among voters. For instance, 81% of Americans oppose cuts to Medicaid, while around 70% or more oppose cuts to SNAP, Head Start, childcare, and housing assistance.
This was a brazen, unlawful attempt to steal our tax dollars. And it was an assault on our democracy as well as our families. The Constitution gives Congress alone the authority to pass laws and appropriate funds, not the president.
Whichever way this pans out, one thing is clear: This administration is trying every tactic—legal or otherwise—to fund its planned massive tax handout to its billionaire backers. And this won’t be the last attempt—even after the memo to agencies was pulled back, Trump’s press secretary tweeted, “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.”
Meanwhile, the administration is still trying to cancel funding for green jobs, infrastructure, and climate that our lawmakers already approved— which amounts to more theft of our tax dollars. And future budget proposals will pair tax cuts for corporations and billionaires with harsh service cuts for the rest of us.
The White House will keep pushing the envelope to grab as much power as they can to fleece working people and enrich its billionaire backers. Our families deserve better. And fast.
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American Voters Need to Care About Foreign Policy Again
Foreign policy is not truly foreign; it remains a domestic issue, not some abstract concept that does not affect the average American’s everyday life. Voters do not realize this, but they need to.
Jan 27, 2025
At the start of 2024, in an AP-NORC poll, only 4 out of 10 Americans mentioned a foreign policy topic when asked to list five important issues facing Americans. This represented an increase from years past but is still bleak since it means 6 in 10 Americans do not view foreign policy as a top concern.
Yet, as I write this, the United States is involved in multiple violent conflicts, many of which have no real end in sight, along with foreign interventions that drastically affects other countries’ well-being. While Israel’s now multi-front war has broken through to an extent over the past two years, and time will tell if this cease-fire is real, many of the other conflicts and interventions linger in the background, if, indeed, they are mentioned at all in day-to-day political chatter.
For instance, the United States is normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia despite open questions on that government’s knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and its hold on the oil industry, not to mention MBS’ brutal killing of a Washington Post journalist. In addition, Saudi Arabia’s relentless assaults on Yemen, backed with U.S. arms, began in 2015. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has gone on for almost three years while the United States supplies humanitarian aid and arms to Ukraine. Crippling sanctions on Cuba have decimated the country’s economy and caused it to struggle mightily after recent hurricanes. And that’s not even to begin to list the various ways the United States has increased its involvement in Africa via AFRICOM, arming countries and training paramilitary groups.
For many Americans, with their own positions so precarious due to our capitalistic approach to society, worrying about how to improve relations with China and Cuba is simply not a priority.
These events, all of which involve or are directly caused by the United States, can and in most cases will result in history-changing phenomena for better or worse. This is not to say that all of these situations require a complete reversal—humanitarian aid to Ukraine is a worthy cause in my opinion—but the scale of these endeavors should not be absent from the political sphere. So, why don’t more voters care?
Consider: In the 2024 vice president debate, the opening question was about foreign policy, but pitched in the most juvenile fashion possible, circling around the candidates’ eagerness to bomb Iran. Not an intellectually serious question but rather a little blood sport for the masses to enjoy. It led to no real discussion on the United States’ overall approach to foreign policy nor to the possible aftereffects of the country’s decisions. No discussion of Ukraine and NATO, no discussion of Cuba or even Yemen.
To an extent, this is understandable. Based on polling in general and exit polls in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, the average American does not seem to vote based on Ukraine or Yemen or Gaza (although recent polling shows that Gaza mattered a bit to those who didn’t vote in 2024). One of the downsides of having a weak safety net in the United States is that voters’ main issues will almost always be the economy and healthcare. If you lose your job, you receive a pitiable amount of unemployment and end up in dire straits with health insurance. For many Americans, with their own positions so precarious due to our capitalistic approach to society, worrying about how to improve relations with China and Cuba is simply not a priority.
But it should be. There’s a moral argument that the United States’ foreign policy is largely making lives worse for millions and that with the immense capital the United States has it can care for refugees fleeing desperate situations instead of vilifying such people.
While Americans may like that argument in the abstract, it does not appear to be a pressing concern for them nor one they see affecting their own lives in any real way. With the 2024 election’s remains smoldering behind us, it’s worth reviewing the speeches and discussions to see how often issues of migration and prevention of war came up. The verdict? Beyond glancing references to a cease-fire in the Middle East and supporting Ukraine, it’s hard to find much rhetoric that addresses American foreign policy.
Voters need to consider that the next economic impact on their wallets may well originate due to decisions made overseas as opposed to ones here in the homeland.
Immigration is entirely treated as a domestic issue and even then, largely in a law-and-order fashion. The economics of immigration, which are extremely positive, were mostly absent from the discussion. So, too, however, were the causes, and it is impossible to address immigration without noting that the United States itself is responsible for many of the migration issues. After spending much of the 1900s undermining government after government in South America, it is no surprise that many of those countries still struggle economically, resulting in migration. Ditto the unrest in the Middle East, which can easily be traced back to George W. Bush’s neocon policies. On a purely ethical level, it seems immoral to turn around and claim that the United States has no duty to help the people it has hurt. On a foreign policy level, it makes sense to examine how our continued interference in other countries’ elections, which is done both overtly and covertly, has caused such a destabilizing effect. Whether the U.S. has done it on behalf of the United Fruit Company or Halliburton, U.S. involvement in South America and the Middle East has helped only the very wealthy and hurt everyone else, both in those countries and in America itself.
The other foreign policy issue sometimes addressed is terrorism, although that, too, was not much mentioned this past election cycle outside of vague allusions to immigrants being terrorists in order to scare swing voters into voting for U.S. President Donald Trump. Yet in most cases, terrorism does not come from nowhere: Destabilized countries brew radicalization and radicalization brews terrorist attacks. An unstable Middle East is far likelier to lead to another terrorist attack than a stable Middle East. A foreign policy geared toward non-intervention could result in a severe decrease in terrorist acts around the world, including in the United States itself. In turn, this would allow for the United States’ economy to detangle itself from the web of the military industrial complex and perhaps spend some of the seemingly infinite cash on concerns closer to home, such as building a safety net that allows Americans to vote with a vision beyond whether their next paycheck will allow them to afford rent.
In short, foreign policy is not truly foreign; it remains a domestic issue, not some abstract concept that does not affect the average American’s everyday life. Voters do not realize this, but they need to.
Of course, much of this lies at the fault of politicians, many of whom could easily formulate a foreign policy narrative but choose not to. Voters are not blameless, they have their own agency and the ability to inform themselves, but politicians seem to see no pressing need to address any foreign policy issue that is not massive front-page news—and even then, not always as we saw this past election season. Why?
For one, it does allow them to make foreign policy decisions without much interest from the public, meaning they can make decisions that enrich their donors with zero pushback from your average voter. For another, involving foreign policy means political risk, something they are naturally averse to. Questioning the economic sense behind Cuban sanctions, for instance, invites pushback from neoconservatives. Politicians often take the cowardly route. Don’t rock the boat, receive your donations, smile, get reelected.
If that makes it all sound hopeless, well, that’s a fair interpretation. But, once again, America finds itself in a precarious position as Donald Trump takes the reins in the White House. His tariffs may well crash the economy, and such a circumstance would be a good occasion for the American public to be reminded that we do not exist separate from other countries and their own economies and cultures. This is a globalized world, and all chickens come home to roost in one way or another. Voters need to consider that the next economic impact on their wallets may well originate due to decisions made overseas as opposed to ones here in the homeland. I also hear there is a political party entirely out of power as of now: Perhaps they could involve this message and use it to their advantage?
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As the US Empire Falls, We Must Take Care of Each Other
Americans have a hard road ahead of us working to create a future that is more humane and just, for ourselves and future generations.
Jan 25, 2025
Days before taking office, President Donald Trump and his wife Melania launched their own cryptocurrency. His organization also plans to move forward with new real estate projects in Saudi Arabia. Eric Trump, the president’s son, oversees the company’s real estate interests and announced the expansion at a conference in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia in October. Eric also mentioned that his father will be the “most pro-crypto president in U.S. History.” A sitting president prioritizing personal capitalist expansion over the people along with the outgoing Democratic administration’s support of genocide in Palestine signals the country’s imperial decline.
For humanity to move toward genuine peace, the United States empire must end. All empires end, because they become untenable domestically and internationally. Anti-imperialist freedom fighters have noted this extensively. The British Empire receded because it couldn’t survive fighting in WWII and violently maintain colonies as liberation movements won independence. The French and Haitian revolutions ended France’s imperial rule as it overextended itself working to cling to its colonies in the Caribbean and Africa.
Even imperial proponents have noted that the U.S. imperial decline is visible on the horizon. The U.S. has seen an incredible amount of domestic social and political unrest, specifically in the last six years. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed fatal and obvious flaws within the U.S. for-profit healthcare system that is still killing and disabling scores of people daily. The pandemic—along with the continuing crisis of anti-Black police violence—saw the nation explode with uprisings.
his nation-state and its imperial hegemonic misdeeds are a hindrance to the quality of life for the vast majority of people within the country and the world.
Houselessness in the U.S. rose in the last year 18% with over 770,000 unhoused (certainly an undercount). Rising rents, climate disaster, wealth inequality, declining life expectancy, and corporate theft (inflation) are major markers of an unsustainable future for U.S. residents. Bipartisan U.S. policy seems to be greater investment into military and policing rather than a cohesive social safety net.
A further indicator of U.S. imperial decline is the considerable resistance to the idea of capitalism as a viable economic system. The U.S. remains the wealthiest nation in the history of the world with the largest military and surveillance apparatus by a large margin. Its ability to control the United Nations is unmatched. The social, economic, and political hegemonic domination appears impenetrable.The world economy still centers the dollar because of the aforementioned factors. The issue for the U.S. empire is that it markets itself, both home and abroad, as a bastion of freedom. That marketing of U.S. brand “freedom” is evaporating in the U.S. public psyche. It’s why you see desperate measures to control social media, like banning TikTok, ending DEI programs, or not teaching accurate U.S. History.
The decline of the U.S. empire scares most people for many reasons, but the idea needs more interrogation. This nation-state and its imperial hegemonic misdeeds are a hindrance to the quality of life for the vast majority of people within the country and the world. While the most marginalized suffer first and worst, the widening net of wealth inequality consumes more humans daily.
In the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw communities fill in gaps where the state and capitalist-based healthcare failed us. People worked tirelessly to keep their families, friends, and neighbors safe. Strangers became community, and informal networks were built and helped folks survive. We see this continually with climate catastrophes hitting different parts of the country. That sort of collective consciousness is needed along with making sure that we don’t have a state and socioeconomic system geared toward harm. In the midst of imperial decline, Americans have a hard road ahead of us working to create a future that is more humane and just, for ourselves and future generations. We deserve better.
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