The question arises frequently enough as to what constitutes local news that I thought I’d address it.
Sometimes, it’s abundantly clear what is local—mayoral elections, housing and parking authorities. But other times, it’s less obvious. What is happening in the White House, for example, has direct impact on people across the nation. Medicaid recipients, veterans, school teachers and medical researchers in every American community are affected. This constitutes local news, too.
So, I’ll press on with my understanding and, if readers disagree, I’ll ask for your forbearance.
All the executive orders, proclamations, declarations, actions and reversals of actions are overwhelming; they make my head spin. It can help to know what else is going on. Here are a few examples:
Reversing The Golden Rule: Red state representatives are embracing Trump/Musk spending cuts — just not those that hit their states. It’s “do unto others but not unto us.”
Alabama, Kansas, Florida, Idaho, North Carolina, Maine and Alaska, in particular, are seeking carve-outs for their states, for their farmers—who supply food for peace programs–and for their universities.
Those N.I.H. grants mean a lot! Yes they do, and in blue states, too. The hit on Rutgers, the state university, tells that story: $22 million in N.I.H. funding is threatened. It supports nearly 1,200 separate grants spanning critical areas of medical research, including heart disease, cancer, neuroscience and brain health, and infectious disease.
Weaponizing federal agencies. The same ones Trump accused President Biden of weaponizing.
Case in point? Pam Bondi, Trump’s Attorney General, has the back of “the patriots,” not the investigators and prosecutors. She has formed a “weaponization working group” inside the Justice Department to examine the “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions arising from the department’s Capitol attack.” Just days on the job — and she already concludes there were such improper actions?
No problem for those who supported her appointment. No outrage, not even disappointment, as she begins the actual weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Avoiding action on promises made to secure votes. Trump is tuning out on his vow to cut prices, as inflation surges. He was going to bring prices down on “Day 1,” remember? Well, it’s not happening. Trump is just too busy purging D.E.I. initiatives from public spaces, leaning on private institutions and agencies to do the same, and ending the nation’s Civil Service, to do anything about helping those he promised to help.
At least he is at work canceling paper straws and bringing back plastic. That should cheer folks looking for lower prices to feed their families.
Compromising national security: “Of all the Trump administration’s mistakes over its first three weeks, the one that could endanger the United States most is the purge of intelligence agencies — at the very moment the administration is rightly saying the country needs more aggressive spy operations.” (David Ignatius, Washington Post.)
The U.S. is more vulnerable to attack as we reduce our defenses at a moment when Russia and China would very much like to profit from our disarray.
Gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a move Musk celebrated on X with an “RIP.” Sure, Musk is looking to reduce the federal work force and capture billions from federal agencies. He’s also clearing the way for his own companies and for himself, neutralizing any moves to curb his digital payment platform plans—a subject for another day—and by planning an excursion to Mars (on our dime).
As Musk’s team looks for wrongdoing, claiming it’s exposing cheating and “restoring democracy,” Russell Voight, acting director of the C.F.P.B., shuts down that agency’s work even though it has been successful in doing just what Musk is looking to uncover. But in the case of the C.F.P.B., its work is benefiting people (and costing companies that violate consumer protection laws).
No federal agency has had a bigger target on its back in the last 15 years than this agency, a nemesis for Musk. Snuffing it out by executive fiat is the ideal move for the MAGA crowd. We know why, don’t we?
The C.F.P.B. has generated $21 billion in monetary compensation, principal reductions, cancelled debts, and other consumer relief during its tenure. Since opening its doors, the C.F.P.B. has distributed more than $3.3 billion through its victims relief fund, funds that go to consumers harmed in cases involving a wide range of illegal practices, like student loan and mortgage relief scams, predatory lending, deceptive financial practices, and illegal debt collection.
(The fund enables the C.F.P.B. to provide financial relief in cases where direct compensation from the violating company is not possible.)
The agency has taken on payday lenders, junk fees and late charges while, at the same time, withstanding legal challenges to its constitutionality from Republicans, who see it as overzealous and bereft of adequate oversight. Translation: It gets in the way of their donors and corporate allies.
It’s more than clear which effort — Musk’s or the C.F.P.B.’s — is serving the people. And who benefits from the gutting of the agency. Remember that what gave birth to the C.F.P.B. was the financial crisis that sunk the U.S. economy in 2008, when millions lost their homes and livelihoods.
Never mind that crimes were committed by saddling people with mortgages they couldn’t afford. Crimes by bankers, brokers and investors who had precipitated and profited from this collapse. The one, you know, for which we bailed them out.
Only a few mid-level bank employees were prosecuted; the architects of the rotten system escaped with their nine-figure fortunes intact. (Killing Field of East New York, David Enrich review, Bank Robbery.)
America needs that agency.
I could go on, but I don’t have the stomach for it. The question is this: Can the president override Congress and cancel federal funding because he disagrees with spending goals already set by law? Get rid of agencies established by Congress?
Trump’s administration has nixed grants and essentially ended the operations of agencies doing work authorized by the legislative branch, and for which Congress had approved funds.
The Constitution says only Congress can make those calls.
Stay tuned.