Do you remember the Iraq War? Do you remember George Bush’s:
“regime change”?
How soon MAGAs forget the lies that led to the Iraqi war as we now illegally attempt regime change in Venezuela — from a dictator, Nicolás Maduro, to another dictator, Delcy Rodríguez.
She was his second in command, who previously had been sanctioned by the U.S. for corruption and rights abuses. What will this latest Republican fiasco cost America?
The reincarnation of George Bush II
THE IRAQI WAR COSTS
U.S. military deaths: 4,600. US wounded: 32,000. U.S financial cost: $2-$3 trillion. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. al-Qaeda emerged in Iraq, and later ISIS, with more killing. U.S. loss of world reputation.
Result: Unstable Iraq. Big winner: Iran, the former enemy of Iraq Still believers: Republicans
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THE VENEZUELAN WAR COSTS
An unknown number of U.S. and other nations’ dead and wounded.
Tacit approval of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other expansionist actions. Tacit approval of China’s upcoming attack on Taiwan. Further loss of U.S. reputation. Tacit approval of democratic election denial in Venezuela and the U.S.
Trump scored almost “perfectly” on the Hare Text for Psychopathy. Although this test should be administered by clinical psychologists, the fact that every measure seems to apply to Trump is telling.
What’s the good of this thing?
The criteria for psychopathy suggest that Trump has no emotional constraints. In short, he does not give a damn about people, and he especially doesn’t give a damn about the very people who support him most, the pitiful MAGAs who unknowingly voted against their own well-being.
The Hare Test for Psychopathy
glibness
superficial charm
grandiose sense of self-worth
need for stimulation
proneness to boredom
pathological lying
conning/manipulation
lack of remorse
lack of guilt
Shallow emotions
callousness
lack of empathy
parasitic lifestyle
promiscuous sexual behavior
early behavior problems
lack of realistic, long-term goals
impulsivity
failure to accept responsibility
many short-term marital relationships
juvenile delinquency and criminal versatility
It is sad that too many Americans either didn’t believe me or didn’t care, because Trumpist America has become much worse than even I imagined.
But being a psychopath may be the least of Trump’s faults. Specifically, he is:
Amoral
Anti-science
Anti-education
Anti-gay
Anti-black, brown, red, and yellow
Pro-authoritarian
Anti-democracy
Un-Christian and anti-non-Christian
Anti-immigrant
Anti-law and justice
Pro-rich and anti-poor
Anti-truth
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In this post, we’ll discuss Trump’s “anti-science” and the real effects on our lives. Science begins with research. Without research, there can be no science, and without science, there can be no human progress.
Because Trump is completely self-absorbed and is concerned only with immediate effects, he has no comprehension of the importance of research. He acts as though saving federal money today is far more important than saving the future.
Sadly, MAGAs agree, though saving money for a Monetarily Sovereign government has zero value (our Monetarily Sovereign government has infinite dollars), while cutting scientific research is disastrous.
Trump is aware that he is likely to live no more than another decade or two, and he seems largely unconcerned about what will happen after that—except perhaps for his legacy.
This attitude may explain why someone with limited intelligence, who is often dismissive of art, culture, history, and intellectual values, has attached his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (even as he destroys funding from public radio, a primary broadcaster of the performing arts).
It’s an irony of which he appears ignorant.
Additionally, the administration also put Trump’s name on the United States Institute of Peace building in Washington, another federal institution originally established by Congress. It is not known if this was in anticipation of his illegal bombing of Venezuelan boats on the international high seas, without Congressional approval.
While he cuts research because it’s an invisible loss — no one knows or can prove what will be lost — he cuddles up to right-wing, poorly educated, because they have the votes. Trump’s mindless cuts will impact your life, and as he is a psychopath, he doesn’t care.
Trump’s Research Cuts & Cancellations by Subject Area
(Mainly in 2025)
I. Health & Biomedical Research
Health disparities research
Alzheimer’s disease in Black and Latino populations
Maternal mortality
Sickle-cell disease studies
HIV/AIDS research (200+ HIV-related grants, including prevention and treatment trials)
LGBTQ+ health research
Mental health, suicide prevention, and substance-use studies
Community-based opioid and alcohol-use interventions
COVID-19 research, long-COVID studies defunded or paused
Vaccine-effectiveness follow-ups canceled
Cancer-incidence studies
Respiratory-disease monitoring
Neurological effects of toxic exposure
II. Climate & Environmental Science
Climate Assessment (6th National Climate Assessment is mandated by law, making this especially controversial).
Funding for the assessment was eliminated
Website temporarily removed
Research coordination halted
EPA & NOAA Research
Climate-modeling programs scaled back
Air-quality and pollution-impact studies defunded
Environmental justice research eliminated
Sea-level-rise modeling and coastal-resilience projects paused
III. Social Science & Education Research NSF — Social, Behavioral, Economic Sciences, 400+ grants frozen or canceled, including:
Misinformation and disinformation research
Voting behavior and democratic resilience
Online extremism studies
Social media impact on youth mental health
STEM-education equity research–Universities reported dozens of active grants terminated mid-project
Education Research — Department of Education:
Longitudinal student-outcome studies
Special-education effectiveness research
Teacher-training program evaluations
IV. Global Health & International Research
USAID & Global Trials
Malaria Vaccine Development Program — Clinical trials halted, Field sites shut down
HIV prevention research abroad
PEPFAR-linked (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) research was disrupted
Maternal health and nutrition trials
Africa and Southeast Asia projects frozen
V. Basic Science & High-Risk Research (NIH & NSF) Cuts to:
High-risk / high-reward exploratory grants
Early-career investigator programs
Interdisciplinary research initiatives
VI. Institutional & Structural Research Impacts (University Research Systems). Federal funding freezes at:
Harvard
University of Maryland
University of Arizona
Labs shut down mid-experiment
Graduate students and postdocs laid of
Tens to hundreds of millions in frozen funding per institution
Cuts disproportionately targeted research that is:
Population-based rather than molecular
Preventive rather than curative
Climate- or environment-related
Social, behavioral, or systemic
International or cooperative
Equity-focused or demographic-specific
VII. Basic Science & High-Risk Research — Reductions in High-Risk / High-Reward Studies
NIH “high-risk, high-reward” grants decreased from 406 in 2024 to 364 in 2025 due to shifts in NIH funding priorities and changing award patterns. These grants aim to support innovative, potentially groundbreaking research rather than incremental studies.
Fewer cancer, Alzheimer’s, and HIV research projects are being funded
NASA: Proposed cuts of roughly 24% overall, with science programs facing nearly 50% reductions and the cancellation of major missions, jeopardizing U.S. leadership in space science.
Fewer grants for exploratory, foundational science are being issued. Because such “blue sky” work often lacks immediate commercial payoff, private sources rarely fill the gap. Consequently, cutting these awards effectively ends many programs.
Less diversity in the range of scientific questions supported.
Cuts to Early-Career and Training Funding: The NIH awarded 896 fewer new early-career grants (for undergraduates, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers) in the first nine months of 2025 compared to the previous period. This represents a significant reduction in support for the next generation of researchers.
The number of NIH transition grants awarded to postdoctoral researchers decreased by 172 during the same period, representing a reduction of about 10%. This decline is significant because early-career and training awards are crucial for nurturing new scientific talent, supporting innovative ideas, and strengthening the future research workforce. Reducing these grants not only withdraws funding from individual laboratories but also creates structural barriers to entering scientific careers.
Department of Health & Human Services: A structural overhaul of HHS that would merge agencies into a newly created Administration for a Healthy America, while seeking to reduce the workforce by tens of thousands and divert programs.
The official excuse given for all these harmful cuts is to “eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.” This lie should be obvious to anyone who favors democracy over authoritarianism.
These independent watchdogs oversee waste, fraud, and abuse.Under the Inspector General Act of 1978, which former President Jimmy Carter signed into law following the Watergate scandal, the President is required to notify Congress at least 30 days before dismissing an inspector general with “substantive, case-specific” reasons for removing them.
The last thing Trump cares about is federal waste, fraud, and abuse. He cares solely about Trump. So he fires inspectors who could impede his personal aspirations.
Case in point:
“A Treasury Inspector General report found that 11,443 IRS workers either received probationary termination notices or voluntarily accepted separation programs in early 2025 — about 11% of the agency’s total workforce at that point.”
It seems Trump and his affluent associates prefer a limited IRS workforce to avoid uncovering any potential tax evasion that might have been managed by their high-powered accountants.
Overall, Trump’s cuts follow this pattern:
Target science, research, and public health agencies
Reduce oversight and watchdog functions
Shrink the education, cultural, and civic support
Undermine preparedness and emergency response
In summary, Trump has cut research and science agencies, public health, regulatory enforcement, independent oversightbodies, climate research, NIH, NSF, CDC, education federal offices, and many social programs.
True to his dictatorial tendencies, he has strengthened national security, increased military power, and fostered anti-immigration sentiments, including those law enforcement actions that fail to address his family’s illegal activities while imprisoning the rest of us.
Thus, Trump and his MAGA base are turning America into a police state of ignorance, where no one has the power or even the understanding to oppose him. Unfortunately, research doesn’t vote, but a lack of research votes against the future.
In 1647, the Massachusetts “Old Deluder Satan Act” required towns in colonial New England to hire teachers. The schools were funded by local taxes to promote literacy, so people could read the Bible.
This is widely regarded as the first law that mandated publicly funded education in what would later become the United States. By the early 1800s, this idea had spread, with other New England states adopting similar town-funded schools, although southern states did not follow suit.
In the 1830s to 1850s, modern free public schooling took shape. In Massachusetts in 1837, Horace Mann championed free, universal education funded by taxes and implemented by professional teachers.
By around 1850, most Northern states had established free public elementary schools funded by property taxes. These schools were accessible to most white children, as racial equality was achieved much later.
High schools came in 1821. The Boston English High School became the first free public high school in the U.S.
If we give them a college education, they won’t work in our factories.
By the late 1800s to early 1900s, free public high schools became widespread. Compulsory attendance laws began in 1880–1918, and segregation ended (legally): 1954, Brown v. Board of Education. Truly universal access began in the mid-20th century.
Why was free schooling mandated in the past, while free advanced education is often discouraged today? The answer, as usual, involves Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology,
Our Monetarily Sovereignfederal government has an unlimited ability to create dollars with just a keystroke. It never can go bankrupt or run out of money. However, it often chooses to fund tax breaks for the wealthy rather than allocate resources to education for those who are less fortunate.
Gap Psychologydescribes a common, almost universal desire to distance oneself from those lower on the income, wealth, and power scale while trying to associate more with those above. This mindset is the primary way the wealthy maintain and increase their wealth. It also ensures that people continue to work even after they receive higher pay.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default early next year.
The department said it will send notices to about 1,000 borrowers the week of Jan. 7, with more notices to come at an increasing scale each month.
Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days’ notice before garnishing their wages.
The department said it will begin collection activities, “only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans.”
In May, the Trump administration ended the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments and began collecting on defaulted debt by withholding tax refunds and other federal payments from borrowers.
The move ended a period of leniency for student loan borrowers. Payments resumed in October 2023, but the Biden administration extended a one-year grace period. Since March 2020, no federal student loans had been referred for collection, including those in default, until the Trump administration’s changes earlier this year.
The Biden administration tried multiple times to offer broad student loan forgiveness, but those efforts were eventually halted by courts.
Persis Yu, deputy executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the decision to begin wage garnishment and said the department had failed to sufficiently help borrowers find affordable payment options.
Given that:
Educated young people are vital for America’s advancement and security.
The federal government does not need or even use any form of income.
The federal government has the infinite ability to create dollars and fund anything it wishes.
Why does the government fund free elementary and high school — in fact, make attendance compulsory — but garnish the wages of our single most valuable future resource, college students?
Free basic schooling still reinforces the social hierarchy. It still supports the Gap. Early public education has been sold as moral and obedience training, workforce preparation, and national cohesion.
It teaches punctuality, deference to authority, and literacy sufficient for labor, not power.
Even in our early days, basic schooling did not threaten the Gap. Elites benefit because it make for more productive workers, fewer unruly poor, and cultural conformity
But college education for the poor is exactly what the rich do not want.
It reduces the fear of losing one’s job, thus:
It increases labor’s bargaining power (which is why the rich hate unions), and
It puts “the rabble” on a par with the rich and weakens employers’ control.
Free college would narrow the Gap.
In this context, a federally sponsored, comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare program that coversevery man, woman, and child in America would help close the healthcare Gap.
In contrast, business-sponsored healthcare insurance for workers tends to reinforce this Gap. Millions of workers fear leaving their jobs or making demands of their employers because they worry about losing their healthcare coverage.
The federal government easily could afford to provide healthcare insurance to everyone. However, instead of doing this, it offers businesses tax incentives to provide less comprehensive coverage—just enough to keep employees dependent on their jobs for healthcare.
Finally, the same would hold for federally sponsored, living-wage Social Security for everyone, of all ages. The rich make three false excuses:
If given a bare minimum stipend, no one would work because the poor have no ambition. (aka, “Keep ’em poorso they have to accept low-pay jobs and bad working conditions.:”)
And things will have to get much worse before the populace begins to understand how Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology are used against them.
Only a nation of fools would give a tax break to religion but not to science and education.
If you follow the news, you’ve likely encountered the phrase “waste, fraud, and abuse” numerous times. This saying is often used by those on the political right to support cutting the federal budget, particularly when it comes to reducing benefits for low-income groups or implementing large-scale layoffs of federal employees.
(One never hears those words relative to the tax loopholes that benefit the rich.)
Keep in mind that 214 billion mathematically equals 1,329 per taxpayer, if there are 161,023,326 taxpayers. I don’t know whether there are that many, but the question is irrelevant. None of them saved any money because of DOGE’s actions. Not even a penny.
The reason: Federal taxes do not fund federal spending; it is instead wholly funded by federal dollar creation.
This is how I fix waste, fraud, and abuse.
Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could continue spending forever. And not just continue, but spend at double or triple its current level, and still not feel a pinch.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) stated that federal agencies have terminated or scaled back 55 contracts over the past five days, eliminating an estimated $261 million in spending tied to what the task force described as wasteful or duplicative services.
We presume that paying a masked Gestapo to arrest, jail and deport people without trial or any other proof of guilt does not fall under the “waste, fraud, and abuse” criteria. Nor does defending Donald Trump against accusations of illegal and unconstitutional actions.
Nor does it cover needlessly and without public approval the destruction of sections of the people’s house, aka the White House.
The canceled and descoped contracts had a combined ceiling value of $863 million, DOGE stated in a Dec. 22 social media post announcing its latest update.
Among the terminated agreements was a $1.6 million Housing and Urban Development contract for support management services intended to “provide coherent, accurate, comprehensive, timely and current digital news,” according to DOGE.
We certainly should not expect news from this administration that is “coherent, accurate, comprehensive, timely, or current.”
Another cancellation involved a $4.5 million Health and Human Services (HHS) consulting contract for the “coordination of quality and public reporting programs and websites.”
The latest action builds on a series of contract terminations announced by DOGE in recent weeks, as the Trump administration continues its push to reduce federal spending and shrink the federal workforce.
Earlier this month, DOGE stated that agencies had terminated or reduced 43 contracts with a ceiling value of $3.5 billion, yielding savings of $222 million.
Those included a $4.3 million Treasury Department IT contract to “develop a comprehensive strategic narrative and management approach aimed at the Human Centered Transformation and Enhanced Partnerships” and a $29 million Commerce Department consulting contract for program management services.
DOGE estimates total savings of more than $214 billion since its creation, which it says amounts to roughly $1,329 per taxpayer.
There are lies. There are damned lies. And then there is DOGE. Not a single taxpayer in America has been saved even one penny by DOGE and its cuts to federal spending.
Tell me exactly how DOGE has saved you any money.
The task force attributes the savings to a mix of asset sales, workforce reductions, interest savings, regulatory changes, grant cancellations, and the elimination of fraud and improper payments.
The HHS has accounted for the largest share of savings under DOGE, followed by the General Services Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Small Business Administration, according to the task force.
The contract terminations come amid broader federal workforce reductions, part of President Donald Trump’s pledge to cut bureaucratic bloat, make government operations more efficient, and save taxpayer resources.
The so-called “savings” had four bad outcomes:
Service to the public has declined. Try making a call to, or getting an answer from, Social Security, and you’ll see what I mean.
The federal government pumped fewer growth dollars into the economy.
Good people have lost their jobs.
Good people are less likely to seek government positions because of their distrust of the government’s fairness in employment.
DOGE recently reposted a Dec. 16 statement from the Trump communications team saying federal employment had fallen to its lowest level since 2014, down by 271,000 jobssince Trump returned to office.
“Promises made, promises kept,” the post reads.
Forcing 271,000 people to be unemployed should only be a promise if you’re a billionaire, like Trump and Musk, who never need to worry about feeding their children.
DOGE has repeatedly pushed back against reports suggesting that the initiative has been dismantled or sidelined.
In November, the task force labeled a Reuters report claiming that DOGE “doesn’t exist” as “fake news,” stating that voters in the 2024 election gave the Trump administration a mandate to modernize government operations and reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.
There’s that phrase, again, “waste, fraud, and abuse,” repeated endlessly by Trumpers as their mindless, robotic mantra. Except, mass firings have nothing to do with “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Musk’s brainless chainsaw, that idiotic tool he proudly brandished at every opportunity, simply says, “Let’s just impoverish a lot of people and claim success.”
In a recent post, DOGE praised the efforts of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, who announced plans for a similar efficiency- and cost-cutting initiative at the international agency.
“We are ‘DOGE-ing’ the United Nations,” Waltz said in a Dec. 17 social media post, announcing plans to cut U.N. staffing by about 2,600 and slash its budget by 15 percent in the first year of the initiative.
Trump always has hated the UN because it won’t bow to his demands. In his 2025 United Nations General Assembly address, Trump sharply criticized the U.N. for having: “Empty words” that don’t solve wars,” saying the institution often fails to act on crises.
He claimed the U.N. is funding an “assault on Western countries, ” and that the UN’s immigration and green energy policies will ruin countries if leaders don’t put borders and sovereignty first.
He repeatedly has claimed that the UN hasn’t lived up to its potential despite “tremendous potential.”
Apparently, Trump believes cutting U.N. staffing by about 2,600 and slashing its budget by 15 percent will improve “green energy policies, solve wars, and help the UN live up to its potential.”
The Epoch Times article ends ironically, with the Big Lie:
“It’s time for the UN to get back to basics: stopping wars and preventing conflict, NOT funding bloated bureaucracy on the American taxpayer’s dime,” he wrote.
It’s not the American taxpayer’s dime. It’s not even the American taxpayer’s penny. It’s dollars the federal government creates at no cost to taxpayers.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 