Scrutable

bjn wrote: Thu Mar 13, 2025 8:29 pm It looks like Trump is trying to criminalise climate science. They have directed the FBI to investigate the charity Habitat for Humanity for taking climate grants from the EPA, their funds have been frozen by Citibank.

"The FBI has told Citibank that recipients of EPA climate grants are being considered as potentially liable for fraud. "

https://newrepublic.com/post/192660/tru ... anizations

And now Citibank itself for administering them. Some disapproving insider on that grant process described, in an informal context, what was going on as "gold bars being tipped off the edge". Trumpites have taken that as fact and evidence of criminal fraud. All grants were made by Sept 2024, but they are paid out over a longer period.

Citibank received a contract to hold the fund and disburse the grants. Trump appointees are calling the fact of that contract fraudulent and unusual, even though the contract type and structure is so common it has a name, and the Treasury has a department to do it. Numerous lawyers within the DOJ refused to sign documents freezing funds at Citibank and initiating a Grand Jury process against it, because there was no evidence. The FBI refused to proceed against Citibank without a signed statement from DOJ that there was adequate evidence, but of course there wasn't so no lawyer would sign it. The Trump appointee, Martin, in the DOJ picked on one particular DOJ lawyer and insisted she resign for refusing to sign it, even though he couldn't get any other lawyer to do it. She resigned and published a statement why. In the end, only a request to freeze funds, which has no legal force, rather than judicial order to freeze, was sent to Citibank, who nonetheless complied. Martin then himself signed the papers for criminal process against Citibank, as no one else would, citing the "gold bars" hearsay as the evidence. Now recipients of the funds who are failing to get installments from Citibank are suing Citibank for failing to observe the contract to pay.

If you want the complete version there's an 18 min LegalEagle youtube video. It also has an interesting analysis of how different parts of the press report it - though that also moves into an extended advert for the press analysis service he uses to generate that content.

Portugal has cancelled a multi billion dollar order for American built F-35 military jets, citing concerns about the US limiting future use of the aircraft in some way. They will very likely buy a European built alternative. I expect a few other countries are having second thoughts about purchasing US military equipment. (Looking at you Australia and that dumb nuclear submarine deal).

Prior to this the share price of US defence manufacturers had already dropped, while European equivalents had doubled in some cases. Not that I’d cry much over the US military industrial complex having a bad day.

https://www.publico.pt/2025/03/13/polit ... ou-2125727

bjn wrote: Fri Mar 14, 2025 1:36 pm Portugal has cancelled a multi billion dollar order for American built F-35 military jets, citing concerns about the US limiting future use of the aircraft in some way. They will very likely buy a European built alternative. I expect a few other countries are having second thoughts about purchasing US military equipment.

Unsurprising... having the wagons hitched to the USA seems more than a bit daft now. Trump v1 was thought of as a blip and his shittyness was mostly contained. But Trump's re-election shows US voters are willing to support such a isolationist fraudster lying scumbag, and so what's to stop a future figurative (or indeed literal) "son of Trump" getting into the White House?

As a result it's hard to see the USA as a reliable long term partner for upholding the same values as Europe - it needs to be able to stand on its own without the USA.

I expect they'll be able to buy quite a few more Typhoon's / Grippen's / Mirage's for F-35 money.

It might bring more collaboration, or at least more potential customers, to the Tempest project intended to replace Typhoon in about a decade.

It's likely to be a lean few years for US defence industry exports, just like it looks like being for Russian ones.

The US is asking Denmark if they can spare any eggs.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -greenland

Canada is now reconsidering its order of American F-35 war planes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/f35-bl ... -1.7484477

All staff at Voice of America and other government-funded networks suspended: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/15/nx-s1-53 ... -kari-lake

More trashing of the US's soft power.

Edit: But hang on, isn't NPR itself publicly funded in some way?

NPR gets some federal money but only a very small fraction of its budget (the first source I looked at said 1%). Most of its funding comes from local affiliate stations that pay for NPR-produced programming.

Local stations also get some federal money, but that varies by station, with smaller stations being more dependent than bigger ones.

So killing federal funding would mostly hurt stations in smaller towns. The national network would not be affected much, nor would the stations in larger cities.

So, Trumps extraditions going on whilst completely ignoring the courts... is this a new and worrying development or did he pull this crap in his first term and I've just forgotten about it?

Pretty sure this is new. Remember, he didn't expect to get in last time and had no plans at all. This time there's lots of plans. He's working with the Project 2025 guys - he's doing everything he can to make money for himself and his mates, they're working to bring about a fascist state. I know people who are counting down the days to the next election, saying that at least he can't run again and honestly, I think that's being optimistic.

The two-term limit only became a constitutional amendment in 1951 and I can easily see them trying to overturn that. Plus with the SAVE act that is pretty much explicitly trying to disenfranchise vast swathes of the country (particularly married women) it's hard to see how, if things continue the way they're going, there'll be free and fair elections in 4 years time.

It's clear that Trump has realised that if you ignore the rules, they don't apply to you. Judges have said that his firing of government employees and freezing of funds is illegal but how do they make him comply? It's very scary and I don't know how it's possible to meaningfully resist.

Those famed "checks and balances" that "ensure no branch becomes too powerful" don't seem to be worth a dime right now.

Fishnut wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 9:09 pm... he's doing everything he can to make money for himself and his mates...

What specifically is going on in relation to this? Musk has lost quite a lot of money in the last few weeks despite Trump's quite extraordinary explicit and corrupt attempts to help out there.

I could check your other points more easily. I am grateful for your reference to the SAVE Act. I was unaware of that, but that was easy to find out about.

The big mystery about Trump 1.0 was how pathetic his corruption was. Fleecing the Secret Service for a few hotel rooms when there was billions to be had. We never understood it.

So I'm glad the world makes sense again and he's now going for the full Putinism of rapid plunder.

IvanV wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 9:46 am

Fishnut wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 9:09 pm... he's doing everything he can to make money for himself and his mates...

What specifically is going on in relation to this? Musk has lost quite a lot of money in the last few weeks despite Trump's quite extraordinary explicit and corrupt attempts to help out there.

I could check your other points more easily. I am grateful for your reference to the SAVE Act. I was unaware of that, but that was easy to find out about.

The US has a rural broadband program, where telecos get subsidies for extending coverage, Trump is now throwing that money at Musk's Starlink.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... -rural-us/

bjn wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 11:35 am

IvanV wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 9:46 am

Fishnut wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 9:09 pm... he's doing everything he can to make money for himself and his mates...

What specifically is going on in relation to this? Musk has lost quite a lot of money in the last few weeks despite Trump's quite extraordinary explicit and corrupt attempts to help out there.

I could check your other points more easily. I am grateful for your reference to the SAVE Act. I was unaware of that, but that was easy to find out about.

The US has a rural broadband program, where telecos get subsidies for extending coverage, Trump is now throwing that money at Musk's Starlink.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... -rural-us/

Any other friends he is throwing money at, or is this just a Musk thing?

IvanV wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 12:47 pm Any other friends he is throwing money at, or is this just a Musk thing?

More generally, I presume after they've hollowed out loads of government jobs he'll be able to fund some massive tax cuts for the Billionaire class.

Musk is in it for the government contracts and hang the conflicts of interest, but Trump so far as I can see is dividing his attentions between revenge on everyone who ever annoyed him and madcap schemes to leave a legacy of an enlarged USA and at the very least a Nobel prize.

He wants his head on Mt Rushmore. In gold.

I'd have thought annexing Greenland and/or Canada would rule you out of the running for a peace prize.

Surely the easiest / most likely thing to do to get a peace prize would be to get Israel out of Gaza. I expect he's got more leverage over Bibi than Putin.

TopBadger wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:05 pm I'd have thought annexing Greenland and/or Canada would rule you out of the running for a peace prize.

Surely the easiest / most likely thing to do to get a peace prize would be to get Israel out of Gaza. I expect he's got more leverage over Bibi than Putin.

He wants a peace prize for carving up Ukraine. The Gaza stuff is just site clearance before he builds a gaudy paradise in Gaz-a-lago and he won't see any reason for that to count against his triumph in creating the Trump-Putin pact.

Martin Y wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:14 pm

TopBadger wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:05 pm I'd have thought annexing Greenland and/or Canada would rule you out of the running for a peace prize.

Surely the easiest / most likely thing to do to get a peace prize would be to get Israel out of Gaza. I expect he's got more leverage over Bibi than Putin.

He wants a peace prize for carving up Ukraine. The Gaza stuff is just site clearance before he builds a gaudy paradise in Gaz-a-lago and he won't see any reason for that to count against his triumph in creating the Trump-Putin pact.

He wants a peace prize because Obama, the first Black president got one. Nothing more than racist jealousy.

dyqik wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:29 pm

Martin Y wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:14 pm

TopBadger wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:05 pm I'd have thought annexing Greenland and/or Canada would rule you out of the running for a peace prize.

Surely the easiest / most likely thing to do to get a peace prize would be to get Israel out of Gaza. I expect he's got more leverage over Bibi than Putin.

He wants a peace prize for carving up Ukraine. The Gaza stuff is just site clearance before he builds a gaudy paradise in Gaz-a-lago and he won't see any reason for that to count against his triumph in creating the Trump-Putin pact.

He wants a peace prize because Obama, the first Black president got one. Nothing more than racist jealousy.

It was daft that Obama got one, in his first year as I recall, but Trump getting one would be wild.

TopBadger wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 1:20 pm

IvanV wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 12:47 pm Any other friends he is throwing money at, or is this just a Musk thing?

More generally, I presume after they've hollowed out loads of government jobs he'll be able to fund some massive tax cuts for the Billionaire class.

Government jobs is only about 4% of federal expenditure. So even sacking all of them doesn't take you very far in terms of releasing money for tax cuts for billionaires. Closing down USAID (some bits of it still seem to be not quite dead yet) is on a different scale in cost savings, because of the large amounts of money it spent on external suppliers and aid money. Though a lot of it was spent with US farmers for food aid, so maybe some of that is getting reversed. So to actually have money saved on a scale to pay for tax cuts, then more stuff like USAID will have to be targeted, where he can get at the underlying spending, not just the jobs.

Anyway, no one has shown me much in the way of handing out money to his mates, except Musk, yet. I see bitcoin has lost most of its post-election gains, but it's a bit hard to say when you should measure that from. It started going up mid-October, but maybe already by then it was looking likely that Trump would win and be kind to the crypto community, the better to facilitate crime, fraud, money laundering and other valuable economic activity.

dyqik wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:29 pm

Martin Y wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:14 pm

TopBadger wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:05 pm I'd have thought annexing Greenland and/or Canada would rule you out of the running for a peace prize.

Surely the easiest / most likely thing to do to get a peace prize would be to get Israel out of Gaza. I expect he's got more leverage over Bibi than Putin.

He wants a peace prize for carving up Ukraine. The Gaza stuff is just site clearance before he builds a gaudy paradise in Gaz-a-lago and he won't see any reason for that to count against his triumph in creating the Trump-Putin pact.

He wants a peace prize because Obama, the first Black president got one. Nothing more than racist jealousy.

This. When you view Trump's actions in relation to his insane jealousy of Obama getting a Nobel Prize, you can see why he is so desperate to stop any war and hang any consequences. This influenced his approach to both Iran and Afghanistan in his first term.

Trump is also insanely miffed that historians rated his first Presidency as one of the worst ever and way below Obama. He thinks that enlarging the USA through the acquisition of Canada and/or Greenland will make historians consider him one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Presidents ever.

Chris Preston wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 8:17 pmTrump is also insanely miffed that historians rated his first Presidency as one of the worst ever and way below Obama.

He is miffed that historians rate him as one of the worst ever? Woke, radical socialists the lot of them. You'd think he'd be pleased to be rated bad by historians. More likely he's miffed they don't rate him the very worst ever, which in his terms would mean he was the best ever.

Chris Preston wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 8:17 pm He thinks that enlarging the USA through the acquisition of Canada and/or Greenland will make historians consider him one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Presidents ever.

Just like Polk is such a famous president for annexing Texas, California, etc.

Martin Y wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:02 pm He wants his head on Mt Rushmore. In gold.

I think that wish should be granted (he says, mentally picturing Viserys Targaryen)