Week 2

Trump ramped things up this week. I said last week that I’d keep a running tally, but I’ve probably missed a lot. There is resistance from many directions, and I expect to see more in the form of lawsuits and other actions next week. The problem is that it’s easy to issue illegal edicts and harder to develop substantive pushback against them.
Again, this is a thread for adding this week’s malfeasances and disasters, as well as what you’re doing or pushback you see by local officials. Let’s keep the expressions of outrage down and stick with actual events, not worst-case hypotheticals.
And yes, if you like, post your pets.
Here’s what the Trump administration did this week, in no particular order
- Levied tariffs on Colombia because they turned back two refugee flights on military planes, then pulled back. Not clear which side gained, but Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro fired off some choice invective.
- Trump bans trans people from military service, plus two more anti-trans executive orders.
- Fired senior staff at USAID and threatened to eliminate the agency altogether. Also, high-up firings at FBI.
- Freeze all grants. Twenty-two states sued and got the order stayed (for them, sorry red states!) until Monday.
- Extended what looked like an offer of buyout by email to all federal workers and a supposed clarification. A careful reading led unions and other sensible people to recommend not accepting the offer, which had a striking resemblance to what was offered when Musk took over Twitter. The administration then said it had no idea that the offer was being sent out.
- Blamed disabled people hired by the FAA for the air crash. Trump has undermined the customary NTSB investigation by posting his bigoted and ignorant interpretations of what happened.
- Installed a Christian nationalist second-line Fox commentator as Secretary of Defense.
- Ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release water from California reservoirs in an unsafe and imprudent way. I would like to see exactly who ordered this and the orders.
- Shut down disbursements for foreign aid. I haven’t seen much about this.
Pushback
- You know that snitch DEI email address set up for government workers? Seems it’s being clogged with all sorts of things.
- One of the pardoned January 6 felons was shot during a traffic stop when he drew his gun, another arrested for solicitation of a minor.
- Jasmine Crockett started posting more on Bluesky. Follow her!
- Democrats refuse to vote on Vought
- Rebecca Solnit collected a number of resistance actions in a Bluesky thread.
- Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois made a number of statements calling out Trump and his people and vowing to protect his state.
- A number of school districts across the country issued statements that they will protect their children.
- A medical facility for severely undernourished children in Sudan is trying to continue its work despite the Trump aid shutdown.
- Update: I intended to include this and forgot, but Cheez Whiz reminded me: Just Security has a tracker for legal actions against the Trump administration .
206 more weeks to go. What are you doing?