Just a glance at the front page of many newspapers and it is depressing to read more than a headline. It is clear that Trump does not have a plan for reform. Like his last term he is only capable of destroying agencies like the National Park by reducing their funding.
Congressman Adam Smith is concerned that this term that Trump is more dangerous than before. Here is his concern about Trump from his February newsletter s performance:
“It has been a month of President Trump 2.0. and his chaotic, and often illegal, cuts to the federal workforce and federal funding raise legitimate concerns about a possible autocratic takeover of the United States government”, said Adam Smith who is Congress member from the 9th District. “I don’t come to this conclusion lightly.”
“The Administration has acted in clear violation of the law and the Constitution. The President unilaterally decided not to spend money that Congress has appropriated – which is blatantly illegal.”
“Trump has fired dozens of inspectors general, who are meant to be non-partisan checks on executive power. He is cutting funding for cancer research, school meals, nuclear safety, and environmental protections.”
Although it may at times feel hopeless, and impossible to stop Trump’s rampage, the track record by environmental groups against Trump in his last term, is a clear road map of how to limit this damage this year.
In this newsletter, are stories on how we are fighting back in Pierce County and at state legislature to make a better world.
Donate, volunteer, sign up pro or con at the state legislature on proposed legislation. In Pierce County we’re asking the county council and the executive to put the people firsts at public hearings and other reforms.
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These organizations have a track record of stopping oil drilling.
Environmental organizations were effective in stopping oil drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and in the Arctic. You can stop this rampage by donating to organizations that have a track record in stopping President Trump. My personal favorite is the Center for Biological Diversity which filed 266 lawsuits and won 87% of those cases in which they halted drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.
Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit in late February to stop the Trump administration from opening up vast new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling.
Earth Justice filed a suit in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska . They argue that while Congress granted the president the power to place protections on those areas, it did not grant the executive branch the authority to undo those protections.
During Trump’s first term EarthJustice won 130 of their appeals which achieved an 83% success rate against Trump.
A nearly identical effort by the first Trump administration to expand drilling was stopped by a federal judge in Alaska in 2019. Earth justice and the Natural Resources Defense Council on Wednesday also filed a motion on behalf of a broader collection of groups asking the same judge to reinstate that order.
Most current offshore drilling takes place outside of the areas in question, particularly in the western and central Gulf of Mexico. Steve Mashuda, the lead lawyer on the case for Earthjustice, called Mr. Trump’s move a “long-term handout” of future development rights to the oil industry that puts people and wildlife at risk. Even activities that come before drilling, like seismic surveys used in prospecting, pose an imminent risk to wildlife, the lawsuit argues.
He also pointed to previous opposition to offshore oil development from coastal communities, including in Republican-led states like Florida, that depend on beach tourism and fishing.
The other groups suing are the Sierra Club, Oceana, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, Healthy Gulf, the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Wilderness League, the Surfrider Foundation, Greenpeace and the Turtle Island Restoration Network.
Christian Wagley, an organizer for the nonprofit group Healthy Gulf and who is based in Pensacola, Fla., pointed out that both Republicans and Democrats have opposed offshore oil and gas development. He cited an order by Mr. Trump late in his first term to extend a drilling moratorium off Florida that he had previously opposed.
“I think there’s maybe more bluster at work here than reality,” Mr. Wagley said of Mr. Trump’s most recent order. “I hope that our elected officials will maintain the long bipartisan tradition of keeping drilling away from Florida.”
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Bold U.S. Congressman speak out against Trump’s lies.
“Everybody in this country should be outraged that Donald Trump is standing up on that podium and lying to you — deliberately lying to you,” Senator Chris Murpy said in an impassioned video he recorded and posted within 30 minutes of Mr. Trump’s news conference about the mid air crash into the Potomac River earlier this month.
“Every single senator and member of Congress should call Trump out for how disgraceful it was.”
Many did, but none managed to do so quite as quickly or concisely as Mr. Murphy, 51. Since Inauguration Day, he has staged a loud and constant resistance to Mr. Trump at a time when Democrats are struggling to figure out how to respond to him.
Senaor Murphy is a career politician who rose to national prominence as a gun safety advocate after the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., has emerged in the opening weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term as one of the most effective Democratic communicators pushing back against a president unbound.
In newspapers and floor speeches; and essays Murphy explains in digestible sound bites that what is happening in Washington is very simple: It’s a billionaire takeover of American democracy.
Mr. Murphy in 2013 with activists against gun violence. He rose to national prominence as a gun safety advocate after the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown,
“It’s an overwhelming moment,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview on Wednesday in his office on Capitol Hill. “Our political brand is fundamentally broken, the rule of law is disintegrating and a lot of people still don’t know what Trump’s actual agenda is.”
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said that Mr. Murphy has been meeting the moment “when too many Democratic elected officials seem several steps behind. He’s providing Democrats with a messaging blueprint for how to take on Trump and Musk and win back working-class voters.”
Mr. Murphy, who is aging out of the “boy wonder” phase of his political career (he was 33 when first elected to the House), is not exactly charismatic; he is cerebral and serious.
At times, Mr. Murphy can sound like a high school history teacher giving a civics lesson.
“Dictators and despots, they use law enforcement to try and compel loyalty,” he said in one video, explaining why people needed to care that the Justice Department had dropped its charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. “They threaten you with arrest if you’re not loyal; they will let you get away with crimes if you are loyal. That’s what’s happening in America today.”
“Right now, there is a distinct possibility that we do not have a free and fair election in 2028, and all of our work is to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said.
Mr. Murphy said he can easily envision a future where “the press is so demoralized, the opposition is so beleaguered and harassed that you just don’t have the ability to mount an opposition.”
“Nothing matters other than the question of whether or not we let the billionaires destroy our democracy,” he said. “There’s a ticking time bomb inside our body politic right now. It’s very possible this thing could be completely rigged by the summer or fall of this year.”
Mr. Schumer, who has come in for criticism from some progressive activists for failing to effectively respond to Mr. Trump, has been encouraging him to keep going.
“Chris Murphy’s frustration and anger at what Trump is doing is genuine and he has a unique, strong, and incredibly valuable way of pushing back,” he said.
His party’s devastating 2024 losses, coupled with Mr. Trump’s blatant abuses of his authority, have made Mr. Murphy rethink a conventional approach to politics. These days, he has been meeting with his Senate colleagues to persuade them that this is not a time to play by any old political rules.
“Trump does not deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Murphy told other Democrats of Mr. Trump and Republicans. “They are deliberately hiding what they are doing so that responsible, thoughtful, fact-based people will say nothing.”
When Elon Musk made a straight-armed gesture on Inauguration Day that drew comparisons to a Nazi salute, Mr. Murphy was not among those wringing his hands about misinterpreting it.
“It was absolutely a ‘Heil’ — a Hitler salute,” he said. “Their pattern of lying allows us to assume the worst.”
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