As we’re at the start of the Trump Administration, I want to get started compiling a comprehensive list of everything terrible the Trump Administration has done since taking office. This list will be a convenient reference source for me to deploy whenever I get into an argument with people who want to try to dismiss complaints about the Trump Administration as whiny partisanship, or generally anyone who makes an argument to the effect of “oh, c’mon, he’s not that bad”. It will also help serve as a reminder that while it’s easy to lose track of things as we jump from one outrage of the week to the next, these policies are cumulative and have an impact even as they pass out of the media spotlight.
So far, here’s what we have:
- Halting Obamacare implementation, began process of repeal which is expected to cause 18 million to lose their health insurance immediately, and 32 million to lose their health insurance in 10 years
- Preventing foreign NGOs which receive US funding from providing abortion counseling, a policy which not only severely undermines public health programs, but is also counter productive in its stated goal of reducing abortions
- Hiked mortgage premiums on homebuyers borrowing money from government
- Implemented Federal hiring freeze, which is largely recognized as a counterproductive policy that will compromise government functionality and probably end up increasing costs and corruption by increasing reliance on opaque contractors
- Demanded he be able to just outright lie to the press
- Said he’d consider loosening limits on torture techniques like waterboarding
- Had the Department of Justice halt a case on Texas’s voter ID law
- Started discussions to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, which serves no purpose other than to antagonize
- Lamented the fact that we didn’t plunder Iraq’s oil, said we still might
- Has taken a weirdly Nixonian line on executive privilege, using loopholes to circumvent laws on conflicts of interest and nepotism
- Issued an executive order pushing forward the Keystone/Dakota Access Pipeline, which had been previously halted
- Froze new grants and contracts at the EPA
- Gagged press releases and other releases of material to the public from the EPA and USDA
- Removed all Spanish content from the White House website, ostensibly for repairs
- The administration has apparently made it a practice to bring plants to their own events at government offices
Already a fairly impressive list for 4 days in. I’m going to try to keep this list updated through the full duration of the Trump administration. I don’t expect to be able to keep on top of everything, so let me know if I’ve missed anything. Also, any info elaborating on the above, like specific breaches of conflicts of interest that arise, are welcome.
For future reference, I’d like to keep the list to things associated with the Administration in particular, so horrible practices of Trump’s appointees before they became a part of his administration aren’t included. Neither are instances of Trump being a truculent lout on his own time. Not that they’re not important, I just suspect it’d be impossible to compile them here. I’m still including things like Trump sending out his press Secretary out to blatantly lie to the press and demanding they accept them is acceptable because it represents a more or less official practice of the administration. As long as they’re, in some way, wearing a presidency hat while they’re doing it it counts.