The Trump Presidency 2.0

[Twin Tiers Living 541]

At noon today Donald J.Trump will be the 47th President of the United States.

This will be a long form thread pertaining to his second term.

[MsKreed 1,647]

The official https://www.whitehouse.gov/ page is up and running.

It already has about a dozen executive actions published. (HERE)

This one is going to piss off a lot of slackers:

 

[Andy 114]

I don’t think people wanting to work remotely are necessarily “slackers”; sure there’s definitely some that don’t carry their weight but that happens in the office too. Not to mention cutting down transportation time (and saving gas/travel money and emissions from the vehicles). I’ve seen a lot of people expressing that they feel they work better remotely. Obviously not all jobs can be done remotely but if the demands of the jobs can be done entirely on a computer in a cubicle, why not let people do it from their home? If they won’t do it, terminate them. Or, better yet, just give people the option to go in or remote, doesn’t have to be 100% remote. Seems simple enough. 

[MsKreed 1,647]

By my remark, I meant that the ones who are slackers will be pissed. Of course some jobs can be performed remotely when productivity is measured/monitored effectively.

 

Unfortunately, for many government workers is that there is no fiduciary incentive for management to carry out effective monitoring. 

I know first hand from working in NYS government how many management level employees were also exploiting their remote privileges. I've personally witnessed rampant abuse....from staff caring for their children while "working full time"....to others brazen enough to spend hours conducting gig work and side hustles. 

"Gee whiz, their Outlook/Teams profile has a green dot, so they're logged onto the network.  That's enough to proof of productivity for us".

Federal office space is less than 50% occupied.....many averaging less than 10% occupancy while we pay to maintain, heat and furnish (and sometimes lease from private entities) those empty spaces.  

https://www.pbrb.gov/files/2024/03/3.21.24-FINAL-PBRB-Interim-Report.pdf

 

Furthermore, there are many jobs that have "locality compensation"..... bonus or pay differentials explicitly offered to staff facilities within certain cities/regions. This may be that the city is higher cost of living, transportation, etc....or even high crime areas where fewer people are eager to work.  Those differentials are often very generous (15-30% above the exact same job and salary grade for other places).  If we can have people performing that work from outside those "localities", then their differential pay is a scam on taxpayers. 

Edited January 21 by MsKreed

[Twin Tiers Living 541]

Other Executive Orders President Trump has signed in his first 24 hours in office include the following:

• Returning the Alaskan mountain known most recently as Denali to Mt. McKinley
• Designating foreign drug cartels as terrorist organizations
• Ending government DEI programs
• Establishing government recognition of two genders only
• Opening Alaska up for energy resource exploration projects
• Restoration of Capital Punishment at the federal level
• Declared a national emergency at the southern border
• Withdraw from the World Health Organization
• Presidential pardon of all of those convicted of crimes connected to the January 6th attack on the Capitol

See a complete list here.

[Twin Tiers Living 541]

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The Senate on Monday unanimously confirmed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as America’s 72nd secretary of State, putting in place the first member of President Trump’s Cabinet on the day of his inauguration.

Rubio’s confirmation vote passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 99-0. Rubio also was able to cast a vote for himself. 

 

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[Twin Tiers Living 541]

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.

The moves Tuesday follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and insisted on restoring strictly “merit-based” hiring.

The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them.

 

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[Twin Tiers Living 541]

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CNN — Thousands of additional active duty US troops are being ordered to the southern US border with Mexico, just two days after President Donald Trump mandated that the US military step up its presence there, according to officials familiar with the matter.

There are already roughly 2,200 active duty forces at the border as part of Joint Task Force-North, US Northern Command’s border mission based out of El Paso, Texas. They help support US Customs and Border Protection’s work there, performing mostly logistical and bureaucratic tasks like data entry, detection and monitoring, and vehicle maintenance.

It is not yet clear which specific units are being ordered to the border.

There is also a National Guard contingent at the border called Operation Lonestar, headed by the Texas National Guard. There are roughly 4,500 National Guardsmen currently assigned to the mission, according to the Texas Military Department.

 

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[Beekeeper 66]

I agree with the squirrel analogy...Let's throw so many executive orders that people don't have enough time to challenge all of them...so a few get through without a word..I don't think it will work.  I think we'll have 4 years of court and no changes actually happen, but he's going to see how many people he can deport before the court orders take over...Maybe we'll be lucky and he'll want to use closed state prisons to house them...and the Southport prison that closed and is empty will create some jobs locally.

[Twin Tiers Living 541]

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth as the nation’s defense secretary late Friday in a dramatic tie-breaking vote, swatting back questions about his qualifications to lead the Pentagon amid allegations of heavy drinking and aggressive behavior toward women.

Vice President JD Vance arrived to break the 50-50 tie, highly unusual for Cabinet nominees and particularly defense secretaries, who typically win wider bipartisan support. 

 

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[Twin Tiers Living 541]

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Donald Trump surveyed disaster zones in California and North Carolina on Friday and said he was considering “getting rid of” the Federal Emergency Management Agency, offering the latest sign of how he is weighing sweeping changes to the nation’s central organization for responding to disasters.

Instead of having federal financial assistance flow through FEMA, the Republican president said Washington could provide money directly to the states. He made the comments while visiting North Carolina, which is still recovering months after Hurricane Helene, on the first trip of his second term.

 

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[Chris 3,492]

I saw this on another site, from a FEMA employee:

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Getting rid of FEMA is a thing for a few reasons:

1. There's long been an idea to do disasters via block grants, as some agencies (HUD) currently do. The premise is the state and president agree on a disaster declaration, someone does an assessment (the current process for this is WILDLY erratic, because disaster and because they stop assessing when a threshold is crossed, it's not a full assessment), and a chunk of money goes to the state. This process is how we do some mitigation dollars, so the precedent is there.

This is a terrible idea, because the states disproportionately influence disaster recovery spending. They spend where it is politically beneficial to them, not where it's most dearly needed. 

Also, the states that receive the majority of FEMA funding are: California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico. It would fuck over, tremendously, red states in the South and Southwest, which use FEMA money as a 75% off coupon for just about anything they need to do to keep people alive or inject funds into public resources. 

2. FEMA is costly, and the prior administration used us for a lot of things, like COVID that Trump finds icky. The main issue is there's no incentive for a state to get better at response/recovery because FEMA overwhelmingly approves all requests, and the states paying less and less cost share. 

South Carolina, for example, gets 40% of it's state budget from the federal government, and it's increasing each year. The state's republican leadership gets elected on a tax cut that is financially predicated on making up the shortfall with an influx of federal dollars. They literally legislate themselves into a financial corner where emergency preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery is either federally-funded or nonexistent. 

3. FEMA doesn't fit neatly into DHS, and his immigration/border initiatives are costly. If no FEMA, then the DHS money going to FEMA could theoretically go to his border stuff (it can't, and all the hysteria about FEMA dollars going to migrants was his own fabrication that he doesn't seem to understand is not legally feasible). 

4. Stafford Act is an entitlement, meaning it can never technically run out of money. Getting rid of any entitlement is something Trump wants to do, because entitlement means exactly what you think: US citizens are entitled to FEMA assistance. If you get rid of it, and do it via block grant, citizens aren't entitled to shit. I'm all about being more efficient and doing what FEMA does cheaper, but removing the entitlement opens this up to grift and f--kery that gets ugly. 

So, think of a hurricane hitting any of the aforementioned states. The state would get a chunk of money to conduct response and recovery operations. Without the entitlement, they are under no obligation to be equitable or even bother responding to a given area. Sound hysterical? Ask the state of Texas how it felt about the last hurricane to hit Houston. 

5. There is a political opinion that FEMA is antithetical to insurance and should basically not exist so that private insurance can fund disaster risk and recovery. This is promulgated by "disaster capitalists" who swoop into an impacted area, blanket communities with lies about FEMA assistance, insurance fuckery and try to buy homes and properties for pennies on the dollar. Entire neighborhoods of Houston were plagued by this in 2017, and then once flipped, buyers were unaware of the previous damage, risk they were undertaking or the nature of the transactions, and the next set of hurricanes fucked them right up. Florida and California basically cannot cost-control private insurance and the wrong culprit is FEMA. The far end of this spectrum is privatizing disaster response, FFS. 

FEMA's existence doesn't stop this, but it would make it easier and faster. 

This would require Congress, and hopefully they are not going to f--k themselves over, but I don't see Congress doing shit until the CR ends in March.

The other side of this is disasters are getting WORSE and LESS PREDICTABLE, which makes FEMA a squeaky hinge, especially since the last administration considered a declaration for climate change. The storm of worsening impacts, less state responsibility, less predictability and increased expense puts FEMA at a severe disadvantage, not in a position to be made redundant or privatized.

 

I think I got all of the f-bombs edited. 

At one point, they were looking to GTFO in advance of the new administration, however now have decided to stick around. Here an excerpt:

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I'm sticking it out until fired, based on my team. I kicked the tires of a few opportunities, but....well, it felt like running. And I'm not scared enough to run.

It's pointless, cruel, stupid and wasteful. But not scary. 

Somehow, I woke up to a world where the richest man on Earth is performing a Nazi salute to other richest men on Earth at a presidential inauguration. It's...weird, and certainly stupid. But not scary.

All this talk about who's to blame for the state of things is just to distract us from the fact that it's a bunch of rich babies scared to death we are going to do to them what they are trying to do to us. We're not shitty people, so it won't be that bad, it'll be justice. But it's coming. It's the rich fucks who thought they could hijack America versus actual Americans, and I'll take those odds every time. 

I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm sad that my people, the American people, are suffering under a regime of liars, fools, charlatans and bootlickers. When the truth emerges about who these people are, I hope that we stop at justice, because there are plenty of good people who got suckered into the lies and did so out of hope, patriotism and a willingness to stand up for what they believe. 

I'm not worried. I'm not afraid. 

I'm patient. 

We got played, and "I told you so" serves nothing and no one. I decided that we're all in this together, and to help each other out is the best thing for me to do at this juncture in life. No rhetoric. No blame. No games. Every conversation I have is "what do you need? What can I do? Where can we help? What needs to be done?" 

I chose to serve my country, and I'm not in the least bit frightened by people who've hijacked it and don't understand what makes it great.

I learned I'm not alone, and while this is stupid, bleak and frustrating, it's not going to last. 

History is on my side.

 

 

[Ars76 142]

I love this

[Hal 592]

 

IMO , sending Federal dollars Directly to States after a disaster would be the biggest mistake ! By the time those funds filtered down through all the Sticking Fingers and Greedy Pockets at the State Level or Clock Tower Repairs it would mean pennies on the dollar left over for those actually in need . 

Edited January 25 by Hal

[Hal 592]

7 hours ago, Beekeeper said:

I agree with the squirrel analogy...Let's throw so many executive orders that people don't have enough time to challenge all of them...so a few get through without a word..I don't think it will work.  I think we'll have 4 years of court and no changes actually happen, but he's going to see how many people he can deport before the court orders take over...Maybe we'll be lucky and he'll want to use closed state prisons to house them...and the Southport prison that closed and is empty will create some jobs locally.

Absolutely… bring more illegals here to “house “ them in  an empty Prison on Our Dime . Arrest them , feed and house them , all with the intent to create jobs locally . Really ?! 

[Beekeeper 66]

You are probably right.  It was a state prison.  So Hochul agreeing to that is never going to happen..I still think if the Federal Government wants to pay it's a good idea.

[Adam 571]

been interesting since Jan 20th all of the "sky is falling" from the left( for sake of brevity). Everything they do, say, think, try is the end of the world and Hitler-level evil. latest is the claim he is questioning/trying to remove Citizenship of Native Americans,

its so aggravating, the habit of the left to rely so much upon emotion, beliefs and opinion, despite how glaringly false they are proved through simple reading of fact based sources. even worse is that we've spent the last 6 years being preached to about how we must entertain the idea of "identifying as" and the sacred idea of ones culture, yet Trump has recently moved to formally recognize the Lumbee tribe in the Carolinas and don't ya know, many left leaning forums, sites and groups are bemoaning this move. from "he's pandering" to "just because they claim to be Indian, doesn't mean they are"

Next, its the new claims of election fraud, election interference, stolen election...yup, the exact claims they've been calling fringe and anti-American, is a growing refrain, even so far as now circulating a supposed letter from a HB-1 employee of twitter who claims to have been a part of a project where bots, ai and algorithms were used to feed readers pro-trump information and suppressing Democrat-leaning subjects...also that foreign actors were allowed to spread influence as well.

of course this person had no moral qualms WHILE doing this nefarious deed ( imagine, if truthful, it potentially could have swayed voter's choices if known before the election) instead we get the suspicious and credibility defying after-the-fact-pilings-on of an anonymous employee....taken altogether, it is again the very actions the Left scoffed and sneered at not but 4 short years ago

its the hypocrisy that flip flops territory every election cycle that is beyond disgusting and truly makes me hopeful the Apophis asteroid makes a last minute trajectory change

Edited January 26 by Adam

[Beekeeper 66]

On 1/25/2025 at 11:22 AM, Twin Tiers Living said:

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I didn't hear anything about money flowing to the states.  All I heard was the states should handle it themselves...I am thinking that means the states should fund their own recovery. Not sure how I feel about that.

[Twin Tiers Living 541]

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary on Saturday, putting the South Dakota governor in charge of a sprawling agency that is essential to national security and President Donald Trump’s plans to clamp down on illegal immigration.

Republicans kept the Senate working Saturday to install the latest member of Trump’s national security team on a 59-34 vote.

 

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[Chris 3,492]

Lee Zeldin has been confirmed to run the EPA

[Chris 3,492]

RFK Jr. is in the hot seat for a second day with Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel on deck for Senate confirmation hearings. 

I think there's a chance that RFK may not be able to squeal through, but I also wouldn't bet money on it. 

[Ann 481]

11 minutes ago, Chris said:

RFK Jr. is in the hot seat for a second day with Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel on deck for Senate confirmation hearings. 

I think there's a chance that RFK may not be able to squeal through, but I also wouldn't bet money on it. 

Truthfully, based on what I saw of his nomination hearing and his responses I wouldn’t be able to vote a resounding yes.  I will be watching the Gabbard and Patel hearings.  I actually find these hearings interesting.  Some Senators get to the heart of questioning while others like to pontificate.  I wonder if they understand that not all questions can be answered with a simple yes or no answer.  If it’s a question of time restraints they should just get to asking their questions instead of wasting time with their opinions and little speeches.

[Chris 3,492]

This asshole can’t help himself, can he?

Launching into a speech about DEI and laying blame is exactly what 67 grieving families and their friends need to hear immediately after an incident like this. /s

[Andy 114]

Oh I wasn’t surprised at all. I’m sure the next big tragedy he‘ll blame it on the scary DEI or some other garbage. Absolute scumbag

[Adam 571]

disclaimer: yes him rambling about DEI hiring right after this event is pure grade-A D-bag material....( and this is not direct response to Andy/Chris btw)

its beyond old hearing every-single-negative thing occurring or ongoing in this Nation is because of Trump. Helicopter/plane crash=trump, egg prices=trump, TB in Kansas=trump, people HE pardoned had other prior arrests or committed crimes after pardon

Well blaming Trump for the crash with zero factual evidence is no better than him blaming DEI for it, as for pardons and TB; TB was an issue LAST January under the previous POTUS but no one really batted an eye then and has anyone looked into the histories of the pardoned under the previous POTUS? have any of them prior charges or have any of them returned to crime? Some folks only see what they are spoon-fed through their feeds or what fits their view of the world,

perhaps expecting metrics to be applied equally to whoever hold whichever office could stop this seemingly  inexorable slide into idiocracy or perhaps thats just asking too much; but this henny penny sky is falling routine at the mere mention of trump is just beyond childish and tiresome.

let things shake out a bit, the system we've endured the last 3 or 4 decades isnt working( for the majority of people anyway) when/if he does actually commit some Democracy-ending bullshit, believe you me, ill be one of the folks calling for his metaphorical head

Edited February 1 by Adam