This is a kind note to all of you who voted for Donald Trump.
AMERICA
First, you will be pleased, perhaps surprised, to see that there will be a peaceful and lawful, civil transfer of power.
Unlike in the previous election, the losing leader will not urge followers to deny the results, install fake electors, and attack Congress; this election transition will be calm.
You may be amazed to see no riots, false claims, lies, or denials.
The loser will not plot revenge and retribution.
She will congratulate the winner, and democracy will continue into the new administration.
If you voted for Donald Trump, and you are a woman, pregnant or might become pregnant, a black, brown, yellow or young person, gay, Latino, Mulsim, Jew or other Non-Christian, or a union member, poor or middle-income, or hoped for a college education your family can’t afford, do not be disappointed at what happens during the next four years.
That is the way democracy works. Not everyone gets what they want.
President Trump has been quite clear about his plans to increase your taxes via import duties while giving tax cuts to the rich, deport millions of good working families, and install judges to approve his own and his followers’ criminality.
Expect convicted criminals to be pardoned.
So please do not cry, “Gee, I didn’t realize he would do that.” Yes, you did. It’s why you elected him.
He was quite honest in that regard.
Have patience. It’s only four years, and he’s old, so perhaps less. This will be a good learning experience for America. The compassionate among us will welcome you back to kindness and normalcy with open arms.
Meanwhile, sorry, but ignorance has its penalties.
Be good to each other. Ultimately, we all live in the same house.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
I thought we were past this. I really did. I was wrong.
For the last years, my Twitter feed has been filled with MAGA trolls telling me that people like me “are the problem.” I never believed them. At least I didn’t until last night, when my nation confirmed it.
Turns out, people like me really are the problem, and I must admit, as Donald Trump begins the process of assuming his second presidency, that I don’t know what to do about it.
The thing is, people like me don’t want to believe that half of my countrymen support the things Donald Trump supports. We thought four years of corruption, lies, ineptitude, graft, and cruelty cured our dalliance with our authoritarianism. Turns out the following four years of recovery only whetted their appetite.
People like me believed that the office of the presidency would humble even the most hardened heart, just as it has for each of its previous occupants (well, there might have been a couple exceptions before Trump).
We thought that even if a humbug were to assume the office that the other two thirds of the government would keep him in line. We thought even the most cynical politicians would put the nation’s interests above their own. We were wrong.
I know Trump voters told pollsters that it was all about the economy, and maybe it was. Eggs and milk are higher. I’m not disputing that, but people like me thought our fellow Americans recognized that the cause of that inflation, and which the Trump administration initiated and the Biden administration continued, kept the economy afloat, and that President Biden steered the nation towards the soft recovery every economist believed was impossible. People like me were wrong.
In 2016, we thought Trump’s blatant misogyny would turn off enough white women voters to deny him a victory. In 2024, we thought overturning Roe would do the same. Both times we thought American misogyny would not deny a highly qualified female candidate a victory. We were wrong.
In 2016, we thought Trump’s blatant xenophobia and racism would turn off enough white people of good will to deny him a victory. In 2024, we thought enough Latinos would rebel against the same. We were wrong.
Time and again, people like me have been wrong about our fellow Americans. Those Americans have told me, time and again, that I live in a Hollywood bubble (despite the fact that I live in Savannah, GA) and that I don’t understand the problems of regular folks like them, despite the fact that I come from fairly modest circumstances, myself.
Time and again, I have dismissed these people’s opinion of me because I didn’t want it to be true. Turns out it was true. If this is who “regular folk” want to lead them, then I really don’t understand at all.
Because I don’t understand how a nation founded in the highest aspirations of a people can choose to be led by somebody who only appeals to their basest desires. I don’t understand how a nation that has fought so hard to overcome the worst of its sins can be led so easily back into temptation.
What do my fellow Americans envision mass deportations are going to look like? A country that only 80 years ago locked 120,000 people into internment camps are now going to do the same to millions?
This is what my fellow Americans just voted for. Unless they don’t really believe he’ll do it. In which case they’re voting for somebody they believe is lying to them. Forgive me, I don’t understand.
America obviously wants a return to something… I wish I’d ever heard a cogent explanation of exactly what, but there was, apparently, a time of American greatness that was also, somehow, a time when the men were men, the women were happy and in which, as Garrison Keillor so lovingly described his mystical hometown of Lake Wobegon, the children were above average.
It is, in other words, a fiction. Worse, it’s the fiction of a fiction. Because that America loved its neighbors. This America spits on them. Or maybe, again, I’ve just got it all wrong.
Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses.
I remember reading those words for the first time and feeling righteous indignation at them. How dare he, I thought, When he has the privilege to go read Jane Austen and smell his damned roses. Eight years later, I take his point. The world is going to keep spinning, one way or the other, and there’s not a damned thing people like me can do about it. Not anymore.
People like me feel foolish today. Not because we lost an election, but because we put our faith in those stupid higher ideals that founded our nation. I know, I know. Trump supporters will say the same, and both of us will believe that the other side misread those same, stupid founding documents.
But when I read the opening of the Constitution, I don’t read it in the voice of Donald J. Trump. I hear it in the voices of my immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents. Of my friends and neighbors and the people I interact with every day. What does it mean to Donald Trump to form a more perfect union? What does it mean to them?
Are we more of a union today or less? People like me believe one way. We’re wrong about everything else. I hope we’re wrong about this, too.
Rodg, Barbra Tuchman in her book, “The March of Folly”, used the term “wooden headedness” to define the condition of those to whom you write. Your aptly thrown satirical dart will most likely bounce off their oak-hard heads. How sad and painfully regressive!
Now that millions of good Americans have voted, Trump supporters might be interested in remembering what they voted for:
———————————————————————-
By Amber Phillips
Donald Trump will return to the White House after campaigning on bringing about massive change to the country, like by instituting tariffs on most imports, attempting a mass deportation, rolling back climate regulations and cracking down on dissent.
Clearly, Americans are open to that. Trump built a broad coalition to win. He dominated among his base, particularly White working-class men. But he also did well with Latino voters and ate into Democrats’ edge with younger voters, suburban voters and in urban centers.
But many of Trump and his allies’ ideas have also been outside the political mainstream, with the ideas in Project 2025 being particularly unpopular during the campaign. Here’s what a second Trump presidency could look like. What do you want to know?
On presidential power: Trump has indicated he’ll try to greatly expand presidential power to crack down on dissent and install loyalists in the federal government. Some specifics:
Trump said he would not rule like a dictator if he returned to office — “except for Day One.” And those who served at high levels in his first administration, including his former chief of staff and a top general, have said Trump has fascist tendencies.
He still denies he lost the 2020 election, and as part of that effort, he once proposed “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” — though it’s not clear what he meant or whether he could even do that as president.
He says his political opponents — from Democrats to protesters to journalists — are “the enemy from within” and “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”
He wants to pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
He has a plan to fire “rogue bureaucrats and career politicians” and install loyalists in the federal government.
He wants to use the military to put together one of the country’s biggest deportation efforts in the past century, setting up detention camps at the border.
He plans to fire special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought two federal cases against him after the Justice Department’s investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the hoarding of classified documents.
He has indicated he will use the government — and potentially violence — to target his perceived enemies: He has talked of appointing a special prosecutor to “go after” President Joe Biden and his family; he has suggested that former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney should have guns “trained on her face” during a war and mused about jailing his political opponents.
On Project 2025 and abortion care: It’s also widely expected that at least some of the plans from Project 2025 will come to fruition.
Project 2025 is a proposal written by former and likely future leaders of his administration designed to lurch the country to the right. It calls for making reproductive care — particularly abortion pills — harder to get, eliminating the Education Department, shuttering the government’s hurricane forecasting agency, building camps to detain children and families at the border, banning transgender people from the military, and potentially requiring mandatory military service.
Trump distanced himself from the document during the campaign, but many who wrote it served in his first administration and could join the next. While Trump waffled during the campaign on whether he would veto a national abortion ban, he tweeted early last month that he would do so.
On the economy: Trump’s central economic pitch is to institute tariffs on nearly all U.S. imports. He says it will help bring back manufacturing jobs. Many economists say this would jolt global trade and raise prices for all Americans by potentially thousands of dollars a year because so many goods Americans buy are made overseas.
Trump has also said he would cut taxes for corporations and end taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. He and his allies have also drafted plans to crack down on legal immigration by making it harder for U.S. companies to hire foreign-born seasonal workers.
On health care: Trump said he will let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic open to removing fluoride in drinking water, run federal health policy. And Trump and congressional Republicans have said they’ll try to overhaul the Affordable Care Act if they win control of Congress, too.
On climate change: Trump has said climate change is a “hoax” and campaigned to end the Biden administration’s climate initiatives and rules aimed at lowering emissions that contribute to global warming and extreme weather. Trump instead has said he will expand oil and gas drilling in the United States.
On foreign policy: Trump could further disrupt the world order by leaving NATO or severely weakening the 75-year-old transatlantic military alliance. He has also expressed skepticism at continuing U.S. aid for Ukraine to fight back Russia’s invasion.
He has said little of the war in the Middle East but has privately expressed support for Israel’s prime minister “to do what you have to do,” The Washington Post reported.
His agenda got a boost because Republicans also won back the Senate, which is increasingly filled with Trump loyalists. The GOP, however, is still fighting to keep control of the House of Representatives. If Democrats win it, they could block legislation with a simple majority.
And now, the chickens stagger home to roost. Voting was so much fun when you simply could stick it to those “bleeding heart libs.”
But, when your own children and grandchildren have to face this hotter more polluted world, uh, maybe not as much fun.
Presumably, you can explain it to them.
————————————————–
CLIMATEWIRE | President-elect Donald Trump won a second term Wednesday morning after promising to unleash fossil fuel development, slash pollution regulations and dismantle President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
The stakes for the planet could hardly be higher. Scientists have warned that 2024 is almost certain to become the hottest year on record. Global ocean temperatures broke records for much of this year, helping fuel a devastating Atlantic hurricane season.
Climate disasters have wreaked havoc worldwide in 2024, an indicator of the growing consequences of steadily rising temperatures.
Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to once again pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a nonbinding pact to slash emissions that are driving up temperatures. His victory comes as international climate negotiators prepare to meet next week in Azerbaijan, where countries will hash out a new target for climate aid that some developing nations say should exceed $1 trillion annually.
Without U.S. contributions, other countries will be reluctant to step up funding, making deeper emissions cuts harder to achieve, diplomatic analysts say.
But Trump has often rejected the presence of climate change, or shrugged off its damaging effects on people and the environment.
Domestically, Trump’s victory raised immediate questions about the future of the landmark climate legislation signed by Biden. Trump has pledged to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which funnels hundreds of billions of dollars into greening the economy.
He will be bolstered by a Republican majority in the Senate after the GOP picked up seats in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.
Clean energy has received bipartisan support in the infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Energy Act of 2020, said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell, a lobbying firm.
“This and infrastructure happened to be one of the areas where Republicans can find common ground,” Maisano said.
Others were skeptical.
Observers expect Trump to follow a pattern from his first term, when he appointed well-known climate deniers to top roles at agencies responsible for climate research, including EPA, the Energy Department, NOAA and NASA.
Trump’s budget proposals sought deep cuts to climate science initiatives, from NASA Earth science satellite missions to EPA research and development. While Congress blocked many of the cuts, hundreds of federal scientists left the government during his administration, and some left the U.S. altogether.
Trump is expected to rescind a host of EPA environmental rules — including climate standards for power and petroleum producers — just as he did when he took over from former President Barack Obama in 2017.’Climate fanaticism’
Trump’s victory means the Justice Department will likely notify federal courts that it does not intend to defend EPA rules for power plant carbon or oil and gas methane emissions against challenges from conservative states and industry. EPA will likely start the process of repealing and replacing the standards soon after Trump is inaugurated Jan. 20.
New rules might take years to complete, but they are likely to be looser than the Biden standards and to demand less of industry.
Trump’s administration is also likely to target the Securities and Exchange Commission’s controversial climate risk disclosure rule. The rule is on hold amid legal challenges from trade associations and conservative groups. But Trump’s victory means the SEC will come under Republican control — and could take a range of steps to ensure the rule never takes effect or is short-lived
Trump has continued to downplay the seriousness of climate change, recently referring to global warming as “one of the great scams of all time.”
Project 2025, a conservative policy template written by former Trump administration officials, calls for overhauling federal science agencies. It urges a new administration to “reshape” the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal research on climate and the environment and oversees the National Climate Assessment.
The oil and gas industry also stands to profit from the $75 million it invested in supporting Trump’s candidacy. Loosening regulations on the industry was one of the few clear policy positions Trump espoused on the campaign trail.
“We will frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill,” Trump said at an October rally in Detroit, asserting that such efforts would slash energy costs and reduce inflation. Independent experts doubt that cutting red tape in the U.S. would have much impact on the prices of global commodities like oil and natural gas.
Trump and his supporters have vowed to roll back the wave of electrification that has swept through the auto industry. They’ve pledged to get rid of the Biden administration’s regulatory regime that’s intended to incentivize the manufacture and purchase of EVs — and to make broader cuts in spending for mass transit and other low-emission forms of transportation.
“I’ve been against cars and car factories being taken out of Detroit and being taken out of our — manufacturing of automobiles being taken out of our system, out of our country,” Trump said in an Oct. 27 rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Analysts said the transition of the U.S. energy sector from one dominated by fossil fuels to carbon-free power sources is likely to continue — but at a much slower pace. That’s largely because solar energy installations are cheaper to build in most U.S. markets than other energy technologies.
But the government support that helped drive down the cost of solar projects — and is cutting the price for wind power, geothermal energy and battery storage projects — is likely to diminish in a second Trump administration, especially if Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
Subsidies for cleaning up existing industrial facilities and opening new low-emission manufacturing plants could also be on the chopping block as the White House looks for ways to offset an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for individuals and corporations.
The debates are playing out against the backdrop of an ever warming world. NASA has already concluded that this June, July and August amounted to the hottest summer humans have ever documented, with global temperatures hovering around 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average.
U.S. residents are already feeling the effects of a warming world. Extreme high temperatures have killed an estimated 815 U.S. workers between 1992 and 2017 and seriously injured 70,000 more, according to federal estimates.
The federal government is trying to improve heat safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed in July a regulation to protect workers from extreme temperatures by requiring most employers provide them with water and time to rest and cool off during the work day.
Republicans swiftly criticized the proposal. House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman of Arkansas called it “one of the most idiotic things they’ve ever done.”
Trump hasn’t mentioned the regulation himself but did make light of high temperatures during campaign events this summer. At one Las Vegas rally held outdoors in 100-degree heat, Trump joked that his supporters should drink more water.
The Trump administration will pick up the pieces from a pair of historic hurricanes. Helene and Milton are likely to be two of the costliest U.S. disasters, with each estimated to have caused tens of billions of dollars in damages. Studies have suggested that the events were worsened by human-caused climate change.
The federal response to natural disasters has been proudly nonpartisan for decades. Trump has vowed a change, saying on the campaign trail that he would use disaster aid to reward supporters and punish opponents.
During his presidency, Trump withheld or delayed aid to California and Washington state after wildfires because of disputes with the states’ Democratic governors.
Although Trump has focused on Federal Emergency Management Agency aid, refusing to declare a disaster would block impacted communities from receiving billions of dollars from departments such as Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, and the Small Business Administration.
Trump also could resurrect a policy that FEMA proposed a month before he left office in 2021 to raise the amount of damage that a disaster must cause for a state to qualify for federal aid. The proposal, aimed at giving states more responsibility for disaster recovery, was opposed by many state and local officials.
Reporters Jean Chemnick, Avery Ellfeldt, Thomas Frank, Chelsea Harvey, Mike Lee, Sara Schonhardt, Scott Waldman, Ariel Wittenberg and Lesley Clark contributed.
—————————————————————————
Is it just by coincidence, or is it God’s will, that another hurricane is headed for the South? You’re on your own, folks.
America has not been in worse trouble since the Civil War, and interestingly, it’s the same people — wherever they now live — that wave the flag while sabotaging Democracy. The same bigoted mindset.
There’s also this when Elon Musk gets to create his Dept. of Government Efficiency:
“Musk says Americans will have to face ‘hardship’ if Trump wins
Trump has said he’ll put the tech billionaire in charge of government “efficiency” if elected. That won’t be good for Americans’ wallets.
As Rolling Stone reports, Musk, who Trump has vowed will oversee the “efficiency” of government agencies if he’s elected president, said during a virtual town hall on Friday that Americans will need to endure “temporary hardship” if Trump wins.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, said that if Donald Trump wins and gives him a role in government, Americans will suffer “hardship” as a result of efforts to address the national debt. He made the comments Friday in a virtual town hall on his website, X. When asked about “tackling the nation’s debt,” he mentioned changing the tax code, and then went on to say there would be some financial difficulty imposed on some Americans. “Most importantly, we have to reduce spending to live within our means,” he said, adding that these efforts will “involve some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
How long will that hardship last? As long as Musk claims is necessary, it seems. And he went on to suggest his plans could garner some fierce backlash”
Trump’s low information voters have no idea, or even the acumen, to understand what’s coming from the tech billionaire who likes to “move fast and break things.” As of this writing it looks like the Republicans will keep control of the House too, with any relative “moderate” Republicans already purged in favor of MAGA Republicans who will do whatever Trump tells them to do. This serial bankrupter who couldn’t get a loan from an American bank now, will be in charge of the nation’s financial system, after he fires Jerome Powell – who’s been insufficiently stimulative in Trump’s opinion – and restaffs the Fed and OCC and gets rid of some regulatory agencies entirely. Musk is monetarily ignorant is totally panicked over the so-called debt, as if his personal taxes are paying for it. He only cares about reducing his taxes and will slash entire agencies to achieve this. His tech motto will break the country.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Another voice:
LikeLike
Rodg, Barbra Tuchman in her book, “The March of Folly”, used the term “wooden headedness” to define the condition of those to whom you write. Your aptly thrown satirical dart will most likely bounce off their oak-hard heads. How sad and painfully regressive!
LikeLike
Now that millions of good Americans have voted, Trump supporters might be interested in remembering what they voted for:
———————————————————————-
By Amber Phillips
Donald Trump will return to the White House after campaigning on bringing about massive change to the country, like by instituting tariffs on most imports, attempting a mass deportation, rolling back climate regulations and cracking down on dissent.
Clearly, Americans are open to that. Trump built a broad coalition to win. He dominated among his base, particularly White working-class men. But he also did well with Latino voters and ate into Democrats’ edge with younger voters, suburban voters and in urban centers.
But many of Trump and his allies’ ideas have also been outside the political mainstream, with the ideas in Project 2025 being particularly unpopular during the campaign. Here’s what a second Trump presidency could look like. What do you want to know?
On presidential power: Trump has indicated he’ll try to greatly expand presidential power to crack down on dissent and install loyalists in the federal government. Some specifics:
Trump said he would not rule like a dictator if he returned to office — “except for Day One.” And those who served at high levels in his first administration, including his former chief of staff and a top general, have said Trump has fascist tendencies.
He still denies he lost the 2020 election, and as part of that effort, he once proposed “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” — though it’s not clear what he meant or whether he could even do that as president.
He says his political opponents — from Democrats to protesters to journalists — are “the enemy from within” and “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”
He wants to pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
He has a plan to fire “rogue bureaucrats and career politicians” and install loyalists in the federal government.
He wants to use the military to put together one of the country’s biggest deportation efforts in the past century, setting up detention camps at the border.
He plans to fire special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought two federal cases against him after the Justice Department’s investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the hoarding of classified documents.
He has indicated he will use the government — and potentially violence — to target his perceived enemies: He has talked of appointing a special prosecutor to “go after” President Joe Biden and his family; he has suggested that former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney should have guns “trained on her face” during a war and mused about jailing his political opponents.
On Project 2025 and abortion care: It’s also widely expected that at least some of the plans from Project 2025 will come to fruition.
Project 2025 is a proposal written by former and likely future leaders of his administration designed to lurch the country to the right. It calls for making reproductive care — particularly abortion pills — harder to get, eliminating the Education Department, shuttering the government’s hurricane forecasting agency, building camps to detain children and families at the border, banning transgender people from the military, and potentially requiring mandatory military service.
Trump distanced himself from the document during the campaign, but many who wrote it served in his first administration and could join the next. While Trump waffled during the campaign on whether he would veto a national abortion ban, he tweeted early last month that he would do so.
On the economy: Trump’s central economic pitch is to institute tariffs on nearly all U.S. imports. He says it will help bring back manufacturing jobs. Many economists say this would jolt global trade and raise prices for all Americans by potentially thousands of dollars a year because so many goods Americans buy are made overseas.
Trump has also said he would cut taxes for corporations and end taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. He and his allies have also drafted plans to crack down on legal immigration by making it harder for U.S. companies to hire foreign-born seasonal workers.
On health care: Trump said he will let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic open to removing fluoride in drinking water, run federal health policy. And Trump and congressional Republicans have said they’ll try to overhaul the Affordable Care Act if they win control of Congress, too.
On climate change: Trump has said climate change is a “hoax” and campaigned to end the Biden administration’s climate initiatives and rules aimed at lowering emissions that contribute to global warming and extreme weather. Trump instead has said he will expand oil and gas drilling in the United States.
On foreign policy: Trump could further disrupt the world order by leaving NATO or severely weakening the 75-year-old transatlantic military alliance. He has also expressed skepticism at continuing U.S. aid for Ukraine to fight back Russia’s invasion.
He has said little of the war in the Middle East but has privately expressed support for Israel’s prime minister “to do what you have to do,” The Washington Post reported.
His agenda got a boost because Republicans also won back the Senate, which is increasingly filled with Trump loyalists. The GOP, however, is still fighting to keep control of the House of Representatives. If Democrats win it, they could block legislation with a simple majority.
——————————————————————————
That is what you voted for, right?
LikeLiked by 1 person
And now, the chickens stagger home to roost. Voting was so much fun when you simply could stick it to those “bleeding heart libs.”
But, when your own children and grandchildren have to face this hotter more polluted world, uh, maybe not as much fun.
Presumably, you can explain it to them.
————————————————–
CLIMATEWIRE | President-elect Donald Trump won a second term Wednesday morning after promising to unleash fossil fuel development, slash pollution regulations and dismantle President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
The stakes for the planet could hardly be higher. Scientists have warned that 2024 is almost certain to become the hottest year on record. Global ocean temperatures broke records for much of this year, helping fuel a devastating Atlantic hurricane season.
Climate disasters have wreaked havoc worldwide in 2024, an indicator of the growing consequences of steadily rising temperatures.
Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to once again pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a nonbinding pact to slash emissions that are driving up temperatures. His victory comes as international climate negotiators prepare to meet next week in Azerbaijan, where countries will hash out a new target for climate aid that some developing nations say should exceed $1 trillion annually.
Without U.S. contributions, other countries will be reluctant to step up funding, making deeper emissions cuts harder to achieve, diplomatic analysts say.
But Trump has often rejected the presence of climate change, or shrugged off its damaging effects on people and the environment.
Domestically, Trump’s victory raised immediate questions about the future of the landmark climate legislation signed by Biden. Trump has pledged to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which funnels hundreds of billions of dollars into greening the economy.
He will be bolstered by a Republican majority in the Senate after the GOP picked up seats in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.
Clean energy has received bipartisan support in the infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Energy Act of 2020, said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell, a lobbying firm.
“This and infrastructure happened to be one of the areas where Republicans can find common ground,” Maisano said.
Others were skeptical.
Observers expect Trump to follow a pattern from his first term, when he appointed well-known climate deniers to top roles at agencies responsible for climate research, including EPA, the Energy Department, NOAA and NASA.
Trump’s budget proposals sought deep cuts to climate science initiatives, from NASA Earth science satellite missions to EPA research and development. While Congress blocked many of the cuts, hundreds of federal scientists left the government during his administration, and some left the U.S. altogether.
Trump is expected to rescind a host of EPA environmental rules — including climate standards for power and petroleum producers — just as he did when he took over from former President Barack Obama in 2017.’Climate fanaticism’
Trump’s victory means the Justice Department will likely notify federal courts that it does not intend to defend EPA rules for power plant carbon or oil and gas methane emissions against challenges from conservative states and industry. EPA will likely start the process of repealing and replacing the standards soon after Trump is inaugurated Jan. 20.
New rules might take years to complete, but they are likely to be looser than the Biden standards and to demand less of industry.
Trump’s administration is also likely to target the Securities and Exchange Commission’s controversial climate risk disclosure rule. The rule is on hold amid legal challenges from trade associations and conservative groups. But Trump’s victory means the SEC will come under Republican control — and could take a range of steps to ensure the rule never takes effect or is short-lived
Trump has continued to downplay the seriousness of climate change, recently referring to global warming as “one of the great scams of all time.”
Project 2025, a conservative policy template written by former Trump administration officials, calls for overhauling federal science agencies. It urges a new administration to “reshape” the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal research on climate and the environment and oversees the National Climate Assessment.
The oil and gas industry also stands to profit from the $75 million it invested in supporting Trump’s candidacy. Loosening regulations on the industry was one of the few clear policy positions Trump espoused on the campaign trail.
“We will frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill,” Trump said at an October rally in Detroit, asserting that such efforts would slash energy costs and reduce inflation. Independent experts doubt that cutting red tape in the U.S. would have much impact on the prices of global commodities like oil and natural gas.
Trump and his supporters have vowed to roll back the wave of electrification that has swept through the auto industry. They’ve pledged to get rid of the Biden administration’s regulatory regime that’s intended to incentivize the manufacture and purchase of EVs — and to make broader cuts in spending for mass transit and other low-emission forms of transportation.
“I’ve been against cars and car factories being taken out of Detroit and being taken out of our — manufacturing of automobiles being taken out of our system, out of our country,” Trump said in an Oct. 27 rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Analysts said the transition of the U.S. energy sector from one dominated by fossil fuels to carbon-free power sources is likely to continue — but at a much slower pace. That’s largely because solar energy installations are cheaper to build in most U.S. markets than other energy technologies.
But the government support that helped drive down the cost of solar projects — and is cutting the price for wind power, geothermal energy and battery storage projects — is likely to diminish in a second Trump administration, especially if Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
Subsidies for cleaning up existing industrial facilities and opening new low-emission manufacturing plants could also be on the chopping block as the White House looks for ways to offset an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for individuals and corporations.
The debates are playing out against the backdrop of an ever warming world. NASA has already concluded that this June, July and August amounted to the hottest summer humans have ever documented, with global temperatures hovering around 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average.
U.S. residents are already feeling the effects of a warming world. Extreme high temperatures have killed an estimated 815 U.S. workers between 1992 and 2017 and seriously injured 70,000 more, according to federal estimates.
The federal government is trying to improve heat safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed in July a regulation to protect workers from extreme temperatures by requiring most employers provide them with water and time to rest and cool off during the work day.
Republicans swiftly criticized the proposal. House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman of Arkansas called it “one of the most idiotic things they’ve ever done.”
Trump hasn’t mentioned the regulation himself but did make light of high temperatures during campaign events this summer. At one Las Vegas rally held outdoors in 100-degree heat, Trump joked that his supporters should drink more water.
The Trump administration will pick up the pieces from a pair of historic hurricanes. Helene and Milton are likely to be two of the costliest U.S. disasters, with each estimated to have caused tens of billions of dollars in damages. Studies have suggested that the events were worsened by human-caused climate change.
The federal response to natural disasters has been proudly nonpartisan for decades. Trump has vowed a change, saying on the campaign trail that he would use disaster aid to reward supporters and punish opponents.
During his presidency, Trump withheld or delayed aid to California and Washington state after wildfires because of disputes with the states’ Democratic governors.
Although Trump has focused on Federal Emergency Management Agency aid, refusing to declare a disaster would block impacted communities from receiving billions of dollars from departments such as Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, and the Small Business Administration.
Trump also could resurrect a policy that FEMA proposed a month before he left office in 2021 to raise the amount of damage that a disaster must cause for a state to qualify for federal aid. The proposal, aimed at giving states more responsibility for disaster recovery, was opposed by many state and local officials.
Reporters Jean Chemnick, Avery Ellfeldt, Thomas Frank, Chelsea Harvey, Mike Lee, Sara Schonhardt, Scott Waldman, Ariel Wittenberg and Lesley Clark contributed.
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Is it just by coincidence, or is it God’s will, that another hurricane is headed for the South? You’re on your own, folks.
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Without millions of purges, mostly of targeted minority and young people, Trump might not have won. See journalist Greg Palast’s work: https://mailchi.mp/gregpalast/heres-what-we-do-now
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America has not been in worse trouble since the Civil War, and interestingly, it’s the same people — wherever they now live — that wave the flag while sabotaging Democracy. The same bigoted mindset.
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There’s also this when Elon Musk gets to create his Dept. of Government Efficiency:
“Musk says Americans will have to face ‘hardship’ if Trump wins
Trump has said he’ll put the tech billionaire in charge of government “efficiency” if elected. That won’t be good for Americans’ wallets.
As Rolling Stone reports, Musk, who Trump has vowed will oversee the “efficiency” of government agencies if he’s elected president, said during a virtual town hall on Friday that Americans will need to endure “temporary hardship” if Trump wins.
As Rolling Stone reported:
How long will that hardship last? As long as Musk claims is necessary, it seems. And he went on to suggest his plans could garner some fierce backlash”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/26/politics/6-trillion-stimulus-where-it-went/index.html
Trump’s low information voters have no idea, or even the acumen, to understand what’s coming from the tech billionaire who likes to “move fast and break things.” As of this writing it looks like the Republicans will keep control of the House too, with any relative “moderate” Republicans already purged in favor of MAGA Republicans who will do whatever Trump tells them to do. This serial bankrupter who couldn’t get a loan from an American bank now, will be in charge of the nation’s financial system, after he fires Jerome Powell – who’s been insufficiently stimulative in Trump’s opinion – and restaffs the Fed and OCC and gets rid of some regulatory agencies entirely. Musk is monetarily ignorant is totally panicked over the so-called debt, as if his personal taxes are paying for it. He only cares about reducing his taxes and will slash entire agencies to achieve this. His tech motto will break the country.
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I Think Donald Trump had links with the occult
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I Think Donald Trump & Elon Musk are running an Occult child sex trafficking at Mar-a-Lago
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Seem like something the MAGAs would buy, but only if Donald said it.
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