Trump’s War on the States

Armed protesters in Michigan - Photo/Paul Sancya.

With each passing day of the Covid-19 pandemic, several things become clear to mentally functioning Americans: (i) the extent of Donald Trump's malignant narcissism, (ii) Trump's ignorance of and contempt for America's constitutional government as he claims all power to himself, and (ii) the ignorance and idiocy of his base which he and provocateurs at Fox News and right wing "news" outlets are protesting against state lock-down orders that are successfully slowing the virus. Tellingly, at many of such protesters, the Trump faithful are showing up waiving their guns thus demonstrating a need to compensate for their infinitesimally small male endowments and equally small brains.  Through it all, Trump rails at state governors who he cannot control and who, under the constitutional system have the power to protect their states even if the result is an economy that will not be helpful to Der Trumpenführer's re-election prospects.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump's unhinged war on the states which hopefully will blow up in his face.  Here are highlights:

After weeks of disappointment with the White House’s pandemic response, a group of governors in the Northeast and one on the West Coast have announced plans to coordinate the reopening of businesses and schools regionally. Could this bring an escape from Trump’s policy shortcomings, or will it simply escalate his attempts to grab power?

Nothing will stop Trump’s attempts to grab power. His novel theory of presidential governance, as he himself has defined it, is to seize “total” authority while bearing no responsibility. He will throw any power move against the wall to see if it sticks. When the coastal coalitions of governors chose to flatly ignore or, in Andrew Cuomo’s case, mock his bid to set himself up as a king, he pivoted in a blink to his dead-on-arrival push to adjourn Congress so he could staff governmental vacancies with a new round of C-list hacks who wouldn’t be subject to Senate approval.

Every day a new tantrum, a new search for scapegoats for his catastrophic mismanagement of America’s public-health catastrophe, and a new attempted end run around the rule of law. The daily Trump show is the most predictable daytime television series since Romper Room.

Yesterday Trump again threatened to use his power to wreak vengeance against states who don’t do his bidding: “If we’re not happy, we’ll take very strong action against a state or a governor … But many governors — and not exclusively those in the coastal coalitions — will refuse to obey Trump’s much-hyped decision to “open” America by May 1. (For the first time, May Day may prove synonymous with Mayday.) Already, some of the Wall Street tycoons he strong-armed into White House conference calls yesterday told him that most Americans won’t return to work without a wholesale testing regimen to assure them their lives are not at risk. Since Trump continues to claim that America now has “the most expansive testing system anywhere,” a desperately needed federal testing initiative will continue not to happen and much of the country will continue not to reopen. But while Trump doesn’t have the power to “close down” states that defy him or to force private businesses to open with a “big bang,” he does have one kind of power — political power. And he will wield it. Not with the goal of defeating the coronavirus — he’s convinced himself that war is won — but with the goal of arousing his base to a red-hot pitch of rage that will guarantee its massive turnout in November. You see it in the internet fever swamps, where Anthony Fauci is a deep state traitor and #FireFauci is a battle cry that Trump retweeted for a reason, despite his subsequent claim that he won’t fire Fauci. You see it in the pronouncements of Republican politicians like the Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, the Indiana congressman Trey Hollingsworth, and the Louisiana senator John Kennedy, who have prioritized a reopened economy over the lives of their constituents. . . . .  And of course you see it on Fox News, where the prime-time lineup is trying to foment this street theater into a national phenomenon, social distancing be damned. “ Where will this lead? There’s no way to predict what will happen on Election Day. But unless you choose to ignore what’s already happening in other nations that lifted restrictions too early, there will be new waves of the virus, including in rural America, among religious congregations that abandon social distancing, and at MAGA venues where Trump hopes to rekindle his rallies. Even now, we are seeing a rise in hot spots in states like Florida, governed by mini-Trumps who were tardy in shutting down as the virus hit — and are, in Trump’s language, “chomping at the bit” to reopen. It’s been clear this week that Trump has hit a new level of berserk since last weekend’s epic Times report documenting in meticulous detail that he squandered at least six weeks to inaction, as the virus cut its lethal swath across America. He even used a coronavirus press briefing to unveil a Goebbels-esque propaganda video (produced at taxpayers’ expense) to try to rewrite that history. Trump has ordered that his own name appear on the Treasury’s stimulus checks, an addition that will likely delay payment for many recipients who need it most. . . . The benefits of this stunt will be short-lived in any case. The Washington Post reports today that the IRS’s first distribution of these payments, by direct deposit, is another major screwup that has affected millions of Americans. Whenever the cash arrives, with or without Trump’s signature, it won’t last long for the struggling recipients. Trump’s refusal to endorse any emergency aid for an already challenged postal system — as of last weekend 19 employees had died, and roughly 1,000 had tested positive or were presumed positive for the virus — could further slow the checks’ arrival . . .

As an added insult, the federal relief program to shore up small businesses that retain their employees has now run out of money altogether.

But like that proverbial rooster who would take credit for the sunrise, Trump can always be counted on to take credit for any good news, even if he had little or nothing to do with it. And to blame everything that goes wrong on someone else. If Americans don’t get their $1,200 promptly, that will be Nancy Pelosi’s fault. The immediate crisis for Trump is that the failures are rapidly outpacing the list of handy scapegoats as this pandemic marches on.

Report Shows Mass Surveillance of Citizens by Postal Service

Just when you thought there's little more the U.S. Government could do to spy on you, a new report comes out that confirms that in addition to spying on Americans telephone calls, e-mails, and Internet usage, the government has been snooping through our snail mail too.   And the oversight is lacking. As noted before on this blog, Americans' expectations for personal privacy rank on a par with Russia and China, not exactly pinnacles of American ideals of freedom.  Meanwhile most of Europe and South America rank far better when it comes to citizens' privacy rights.  A piece in Slate looks at this new exposing of domestic spying on Americans.  Here are some highlights:

In a post-Snowden world, most people are aware that the government—any government—is pretty interested in emails. They’re not that into you, just your metadata, so the theory goes. In national security-speak, governments like to call the words that we use to make up the sentences we write that are then sent to people we know via electronic mail—data. We used to call data, you know, postcards, and thank you notes, but times have changed. Or have they?

A buried internal audit by the United States Postal Service popped up in the New York Times on Tuesday, showing the USPS approved a whopping 50,000 requests to secretly monitor Americans’ mail last year alone. The justification for the surveillance effort was familiar one—the data was needed to aid criminal and national security investigations. Even more unsurprising is the audit showed “the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax,” the Times reports. “The audit, which was reported on earlier by Politico, found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests to monitor an individual’s mail without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization.”

At the request of state or federal law enforcement agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names, return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters and packages before they are delivered to a person’s home. Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property records and even accomplices. 

The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in the United States. The program’s primary purpose is to process the mail, but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and received by people they are investigating.

Feel like you have any privacy left?