During his 2024 campaign, now-President Donald Trump insisted that he had no desire to cut Social Security or Medicare. But according to ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — who served as commissioner for the Social Security Administration (SSA) under former President Joe Biden — mass SSA layoffs being carried out by the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will make it much harder for the agency to function. O'Malley fears that an "interruption of benefits" will occur.

Trump officials, in response to criticism from O'Malley and others, claim that SSA downsizing is designed to protect Social Security and make the program run more efficiently — not endanger it.

In an article published on August 5, however, Salon's Heather Digby Parton warns that when it comes to "privatizing Social Security," some Trump allies are saying the quiet part out loud — including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

READ MORE: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued

"One provision of the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' was called 'Trump Accounts,' which are new retirement savings accounts for babies that supposedly will be opened with a $1000 contribution from the federal government," Parton explains. "At an event hosted by Breitbart News, Bessent suggested the accounts would be so popular that people will demand the government replace Social Security with it. 'In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security,' he said."

Parton continues, "The White House quickly walked back his comments, saying that they have no intention of privatizing Social Security, yadda, yadda yadda. As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said about Bessent's little truth bomb, 'Between Bessent's comments and the harm DOGE has already done to the agency, it's clear Trump was lying all along about protecting Social Security.' Donald Trump, lying? This should come as no surprise."

Privatizing Social Security, Parton notes, is an idea some Republicans were proposing long before Trump's 2016 campaign.

"After his reelection in 2004," Parton recalls, "President George W. Bush declared he would spend his political capital on it. After debuting his plan in the 2005 State of the Union address, he barnstormed the country in support of it — and the idea flamed out like a SpaceX rocket. Apparently, it’s time to try again."

READ MORE: Trump official reminds the world that the US now has a 'national position' on a single word

The Salon journalist continues, "Yes, Republicans staged a full-blown tantrum back in 2023 when President Joe Biden suggested in his State of the Union address that they wanted to cut the program. But nobody believed their denials. ... Promise or no promise, it's clear the GOP has not changed its goal one bit — and the fight to protect Social Security and the social safety net should remain the essential mission of the Democratic Party."

READ MORE: There's a very simple reason why Trump will never release the Epstein files

Heather Digby Parton's full article for Salon is available at this link.

During his four years in the White House, former U.S. President Joe Biden aggressively championed the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and applauded Sweden and Finland's decision to join the alliance. Biden valued the United States' post-World War 2 alliances with European countries, which he viewed as important to U.S. interests from a national security standpoint. And he favored military aid to Ukraine without putting American "boots on the ground."

U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House 11 months ago saw a major departure from Biden's foreign policy. Although Trump isn't outright calling for U.S. withdrawal from NATO — an idea he toyed with during his first presidency — he is much more critical of the European Union (EU) and NATO than Biden.

Politico's Eli Stokols, in an article published on December 23, examines the dramatic changes in U.S./Europe relations that have occurred during Trump's second presidency.

"President Donald Trump's first year back in office shattered any remaining illusions among European leaders that he can be managed or controlled," Stokols reports. "His open hostility toward the European Union has strained a transatlantic alliance that's endured since World War 2 and deepened rifts between Europe's national leaders and within the bloc, imperiling its ability to respond to Trump's threats and taunts with the kind of unity and strength he respects. That's left Ukraine's fate hanging in the balance heading into 2026, not to mention unanswered existential questions about European security at a moment when many fear Russian President Vladimir Putin's territorial aims extend further westward beyond Ukraine."

Stokols adds, "But in many ways, Europe has survived the rollercoaster — for now."

According to Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Europe's relationship with the U.S. has changed considerably during Trump's second presidency.

Puglierin told Politico, "The Europeans cannot afford to cut ties and to hand in the divorce papers because they are still too dependent, especially when it comes to security and an American military commitment to defending Europe…. We need to be pretty clear-eyed. In the old days, there was a clear mainstream understanding of the old transatlantic relationship enshrined by the western values and norms and principles, the rules-based international order. And now, I think we see a competing project emerging."

The Trump Administration's newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) is highly critical of the EU, emphasizing culture-war themes and claiming that Europe is committing "cultural suicide."

Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, considers the 2025 NSS a "game changer" that has "permanently changed" the post-WW2 U.S./Europe alliance.

Stelzenmüller told Politico, "It shouldn't be underestimated how much of a shock it was for European leaders and publics to read the Europe chapter of the National Security Strategy and to see put in writing that this administration thinks of Europe, or European political centrists, as unreliable allies and is taking such an adversarial one against them. For 2026, we need to buckle up and plan for the worst on all counts. We have obvious vulnerabilities, and those are going to be exploited…. This is shattering for a lot of the countries who thought that there was nothing safer than their bilateral relationship with the United States."

Read Eli Stokols' full article for Politico at this link.

Although Scott Jennings isn't the only conservative pundit on CNN, he is by far the most relentless in his defense of President Donald Trump. Ana Navarro and SE Cupp are Never Trumpers, and GOP pollster Kristin Soltis Anderson is conservative but not ultra-MAGA.

Jennings, however, lashes out over even mild criticism of Trump. And during a Sunday, December 21 panel on CNN's "State of the Union," Jennings became furious when Kate Bedingfield (former White House communications director in the Biden Administration) and others noted Trump's low approval ratings in polls.

Bedingfield pointed out that Trump, according to polls, is "dropping with independents, he's dropping with moderates as we're looking toward a midterm election where people are concerned about costs."

Anderson interjected that Trump is talking about "affordability" but needs to "talk about it in the right way," stressing that if he doesn't, it's "going to turn out politically perilous for him."

Democratic attorney and former South Carolina State Rep. Bakari Sellers, also on the panel, commented that Trump is coming across like someone's "old uncle."

Jennings grew increasingly angry over the other panelists saying that Trump is unpopular, insisting, "The president is the head of the Republican Party. He's never been stronger among Republicans than he is right now…. You guys have been desperate, for ten years, to find the moment where Donald Trump is no longer going to be accepted by the (Republican Party). He is the leader of the Republican Party. He is going to continue to be the leader of the Republican Party."

Bedingfield brutally mocked Jennings, sarcastically commenting that "it is Bill Clinton who has really suffered for the last six months" because of "his inability to govern."

During his lengthy 2025 State of the Union address on Tuesday night, March 4, President Donald Trump praised the work that SpaceX/Tesla/X.com CEO Elon Musk is doing with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump applauded the mass layoffs of federal government employees as a huge savings for taxpayers, but Democratic lawmakers in attendance weren't applauding: many of them were scowling and held up signs attacking the president's economic policies.

After the speech, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) gave a Democratic Party rebuttal. And Slotkin — in contrast to the theatrical, widely mocked approach that Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) used during her rebuttal to then-President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in 2024 — maintained a matter-of-fact tone but laid out, item by item, her criticisms of Trump's handling of the economy and the federal government.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on Wednesday morning, March 5 — the morning after Trump's speech — journalist/author Jill Lawrence warns that the Trump Administration/DOGE cuts aren't cutting pork and fat out of federal agencies, but are undermining a variety of important government functions. And she argues that federal courts, in the end, are unlikely to prevent the damage from occurring.

READ MORE: Here's why women at Trump's State of the Union are wearing pink

The U.S. Department of Education, Lawrence laments, "could be gone before you know it."

"In fact, half the government could be gone, and the half that's left could be unrecognizable, before most people know it and anyone can do anything about it," Lawerence observes. "It's all happening at whiplash speed, with little to no transparency. Even court challenges are no match for Trump's ideological army and Elon Musk's digital SWAT team."

Lawrence points out that Judge Amy Berman Jackson recently "summed up the threat" at a hearing on the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

The Barack Obama appointee warned that the CFPB could be "choked out of its very existence before I get to rule on the merits." And Lawrence fears that a variety of agencies — from the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Social Security Administration — will suffer major damage.

READ MORE: 'Lies, lies and more lies – but no plan to lower costs': Dems blast Trump's State of the Union

Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley, Lawrence notes, told The Bulwark, in early March, that he predicts the Social Security Administration will "collapse" in the next one to three months — which will bring about a major "interruption of benefits."

"In other words, Trump and Musk could outrun the rule of law, rendering it irrelevant," Lawrence explains. "You'd think the past decade would have snapped us out of the fantasy that our institutions — or, even more fantastical, the U.S. electorate — will rescue us. We're living through the ultimate test right now, and the signs are not hopeful."

READ MORE: Ex-Treasury official warns Trump's tariffs will make consumer confidence even worse

Jill Lawrence's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

The union for US Department of Education workers has raised alarm about a top department official’s display of a flag with Christian nationalist associations that was flown during the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol building.

The flag was spotted outside the Washington, DC, office of Murray Bessette, the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, according to a report on Monday from USA Today. However, it’s not clear how long it’s been displayed there.

The stark white banner, emblazoned with a pine tree and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven”—a reference to John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Government”—was first used during the American Revolution and flown by six schooner privateers known as “Washington’s Cruisers” for naval operations and supply capture missions.

The flag was flown sporadically throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, most prominently in New England. But it remained relatively obscure until recently.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained in November, it has undergone a revival among proponents of Christian nationalism over the past decade:

Its affiliation with Christian supremacist politicians largely began in 2013 after being reintroduced as a symbol of supremacy by Dutch Sheets, a highly influential leader in the New Apostolic Reformation, today’s most powerful Christian supremacist movement.The NAR is an anti-democratic Christian supremacist movement that seeks to control all areas of national life, from the halls of Congress to one’s living room, compelling all Americans to align their lives with NAR’s worldview. According to NAR leaders, those who oppose them are not just wrong but under the control of the demonic, and are even possibly demonic entities themselves.

Sheets, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, helped to mobilize thousands of Christian followers to the Capitol leading up to the January 6 riot, where supporters of the president sought to violently overturn the electoral victory of his opponent, former President Joe Biden. The pastor referred to the recognition of Biden’s election as “an evil attempt to overthrow the government of the United States of America.”

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag was spotted on multiple occasions at the Capitol on that day and at other “Stop the Steal” events protesting Trump’s 2020 election loss. It has continued to cause controversy in the years since.

In 2023, the right-wing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was seen flying the flag outside his New Jersey beach house. Alito blamed his wife for the flag flying outside their property just weeks before a documentarian published a secret recording of him expressing his desire to return the country to “a place of godliness,” and agreeing with radical right-wing groups who he said refuse to “negotiate with the left.”

The flag has also been displayed by several Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has expressed many Christian nationalist viewpoints, including a distaste for the idea that the Constitution requires the separation of church and state.

Its appearance outside Bessette’s office is not the first time a government agency has displayed the flag during the second Trump presidency. In June, the Small Business Administration also displayed it during a ceremony, though only for about a day, according to Wired.

Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union for Education Department workers nationwide, said in a statement that the agency “has no place for symbols that were carried by insurrectionists.”

“Since January, hardworking public servants at the US Department of Education have been subjected to threats, harassment, and sustained demoralization,” she added. “Now, they are being asked to work in an environment where a senior leader is prominently displaying an offensive flag—one that, regardless of its origins in the American Revolution, has come to represent intolerance, hatred, and extremism.”

The use of a flag with Christian nationalist affiliations is especially noteworthy at the Education Department, which has been at the center of Trump’s push to “bring back religion in America” and promote “Judeo‑Christian principles.”

Trump has endorsed state-level policies requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms, which he called a “major step in the revival of religion.” In September, he also said that he would soon roll out a policy to provide “total protection” for prayer in public schools, which has long been considered unconstitutional when sponsored by school or state officials.

U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, did his best to make “good trouble” during President Donald Trump’s first address to Congress since taking office in January.

Brandishing his cane, the Lone Star septuagenarian rose from his seat in the U.S. House chamber and challenged Trump’s claim that he has a sweeping mandate to enact the tidal wave of changes his Republican administration has unleashed within the federal government.

Green stood alone, with his Democratic colleagues content to sit silent and hold quaint church fan signs with words that called the president a liar and criticized billionaire bureaucrat Elon Musk.

“If [Democrats] are going to use a 77-year-old heckling congressman as the face of their resistance, then bring it on,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, told Fox News after Trump’s speech. “But we’re not going to tolerate that on the House floor, and I don’t think the American people are going to tolerate that either.”

For the time being, let’s set aside Johnson’s apparent amnesia when it comes to far more outlandish outbursts from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and other GOP lawmakers during former President Joe Biden’s speeches to Congress. Their antics occurred despite pleas from Johnson for decorum.

Otherwise, the speaker’s assessment of Democrats is spot on. Before, during and since Trump’s address, they have been hard pressed to present a united front or take advantage of the mayhem that has ensued since Trump, Musk & Associates set upon their mass purging of government jobs, on-again/off-again tariffs and a 180-degree turn on U.S. global diplomacy.

The chaos has even led some diehard Republicans to question the administration’s direction, notably U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. Otherwise a Trump dieheard, he’s consistently issued warnings against any alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who the senator has called “a gangster” and “an evil man” who “makes Jeffrey Dahmer look like Mother Theresa.”

Yet even with the current situation begging for a voice of reason, Democrats have fumbled to present a coherent message. And for a party that’s desperately trying to make headway after losing last year’s presidential election and its slim U.S. Senate majority, that’s not a recipe for success.

Rachel Janfaza has paid attention to the Democrats’ decline for a while now. She’s a journalist who follows Gen Z political trends and young voters (I recommend her Substack), a group that will be critical in next year’s midterms and the 2028 presidential election when Trump (presumably) won’t seek another term.

Before Trump’s speech to Congress, Janfaza took note of Democrats’ cringeworthy use of social media. First, nearly two dozen Senate Democrats posted almost identical Instagram reels with the caption “Sh-t That Ain’t True” ahead of Trump’s address. Next, they latched on to a months-old “Choose Your Fighter” Tik Tok trend.

Watch those links, especially if you’re part of Gen X, a boomer or even a millennial. Tell me they don’t give you that same feeling I get when my teen daughter says: “Dad, stop dancing!”

The awkwardness – and lack of impact – certainly made an impression with Janfaza in the most recent of her newsletter, The Up and Up.

“The futile social media plays come as every hour, if not minute, young Americans are getting real-time alerts about how Trump (and yes, Musk) are dismantling core government systems – rolling back federal employment protections, gutting funding, and targeting programs that could directly impact their futures (including internship and educational programs),” she wrote.

Democrats are also failing to fill the void here in Louisiana, where Republican state leaders and lawmakers have adroitly held the spotlight on matters such as criminal justice and reproductive health. Progressives can’t gather enough support to steer the party where they think it needs to head, and moderates desperately long to regain the middle ground they lost long ago to the GOP.

There’s one lesson for Democrats to learn from Rep. Al Green’s quixotic moment on the House floor, and it comes straight from the soul music mainstay with whom the congressman shares a name: “Let’s Stay Together.”

If they can’t at least do that, they should get used to another greatest hit from Green: “Tired of Being Alone.”

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

Somalis are garbage! Deport a college student during a trip home for Thanksgiving! Pardon the Honduran ex-president convicted of drug peddling! Kill survivors from an unarmed boat the Navy has bombed in the Caribbean! Turn against Canada, our number one ally! Threaten to take over Greenland! Sell out the Ukrainians to the Russian invaders!

And there’s a good chance, a very good chance, the worst is yet to come.

How did we get a president who says these things, does these things? And what are the Democrats doing about it?

Not much. A record speech in the Senate by Corey Booker. Another in the House by Hakeem Jeffries. And of course there is self-righteous outrage over the Jeffrey Epstein files. The only new substantive issue is “affordability,” and it came from Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist. The Democratic Party’s strategy appears to be to lie low, let Trump wreck the country, and then hope to win enough House seats to stop him during his last two years. Let’s hope that works, but we should be worried, very worried, even though recent elections have shown increasing voter dissatisfaction with the Republicans.

What’s worrisome about the Dems is the mindset of believing that the system, overall, was working just fine until Trump came along. Certainly, that was the case for party elites, but it sure wasn’t for working people.

Why worry? Because the same party, the same mindset, and the same devotion to wealthy donors are what got us here.

Let’s start with Biden. Liberals and much of the left claimed he was the greatest pro-labor president since FDR, and that his Inflation Reduction Act was the greatest public works program since the New Deal. Well, okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and maybe if he’d been able to put a few sentences together, those claims would have proved true, but he didn’t execute and he still shouldn’t have been running for a second term. And the American public knew it. In February 2024, a whopping 86 percent thought Biden, age 81, was too old to run again.

How many Democrats had the courage to say out loud that he shouldn’t run. Very few. How many progressives called for him to step down? Very few. It was a pathetic display of cowardice. No one wanted to offend him, to provoke his wrath and that of his team, to be pushed outside, to have their chances to run in 2028 diminished because they called for him to step aside. As far as I’m concerned, all the 2028 Democratic presidential contenders have blood on their hands for staying silent. They showed zero guts when we needed the big boys and girls to tell Biden to step aside.

It wasn’t until he showed clear signs of decline in the June 2024 debate with Trump that voices were raised. That didn’t take courage. It only took watching the disaster unfold slowly and painfully.

And then came the next debacle—the coronation of Kamala Harris. It was as if the entire party forgot that she had dropped out of the presidential race in 2020 when her poll numbers sank to 3 percent. Think about that for a second. You must be very unpopular to attract so little support. Actually, you have to have no support at all. And yet, she was given the nod in 2024 without a primary challenge?

But Harris was very popular with the Democratic establishment. She didn’t utter a sound that offended the donor class. She was the darling of liberals who believed her gender and mixed ethnic origins gave her nomination special significance. She argued for the “opportunity society,” not for progressive economic populism, and her brother, Tony West, a Wall Steet insider, her campaign’s secret weapon, vouched for whose side she was on. There was no way she could win back the working class from Trump.

What infuriates me still is that the Democratic establishment, and many progressives, did not act on the Trump threat and instead went along with the Biden/Harris train wreck. Given that we had already endured four years of Trump, don’t call this 20-20 hindsight. I sent Biden birthday greetings in November 2023, and begged him not to run.

It’s a sad day when referencing myself makes a point about the cowardice of the Democratic Party. But it’s more than just the failure of nerve. What’s worrisome about the Dems is the mindset of believing that the system, overall, was working just fine until Trump came along. Certainly, that was the case for party elites, but it sure wasn’t for working people.

The vast majority of Democratic politicians, consultants, operatives, and funders do not see a conflict between capital and labor, between their wealthy corporate donors and working people, or between their own wealth and growing inequality. In their ideological universe there is no class conflict. We’re all in this together, no matter what our wealth, our education, or our level of job insecurity. Runaway inequality may be a concern, but it is not viewed as an existential problem that is ripping our country apart.

Instead, the Democrats who control the party support policies that avoid progressive economic populism. They’re not interested in government forcing corporations to stop needless mass layoffs, raising the minimum wage, breaking up monopolies, facilitating unionization, and guaranteeing jobs for all. These policies are threats to corporate interests and therefore discouraged, no matter what public opinion data shows. You don’t bite the hands that feed your candidacy and, by the way, may provide highly paid jobs for you, your family, and your staff once you leave office.

But none of this is viewed as corruption or a betrayal of the public’s trust. Party leaders really believe that centrist policies will grow the pie for everyone. They cherish the “opportunity society” that gives everyone a fair chance at the American dream. They believe that the capitalist drive for wealth, free of burdensome government controls, will produce the good jobs of the future, and that effective educational policies will prepare working people for them—or at least give their children a shot at success. It’s kumbaya economics, unhinged from recent history and future progressive goals.

We’ve heard all this for more than a generation. This was the justification for deregulating Wall Street; the justification for free trade deals that wiped out millions of industrial jobs; the justification for permitting corporations to lay off workers to pay for leveraged buyouts and stock buybacks while avoiding taxes; and the justification for public-private partnerships that enriched the private partners at taxpayer expense.

Nearly all the members of the Democratic Party establishment, as Bernie Sanders so often points out, are wealthy and really have no clue about what working people are experiencing:

It’s state after state after state. The Democratic Party has abdicated—they’ve given up. They’re not fighting for the working class. What the Democratic Party has been is a billionaire-funded, consultant-driven party—and way out of touch with where the working class of this country is.

I fear that unless this corporatist mindset changes substantially, the Democrats will fail yet again in the new year, although I am praying for the Republicans to lose in the midterms. I’m afraid to even think of the harm a lame duck Trump will do in his final act, especially to the most defenseless among us. And of course, that assumes he doesn’t find a way to continue, heaven forbid.

Happy Holidays!

“Why is Russell Vought showing the world his weird, creepy pledge of allegiance to big corporations? Have some dignity, Russell.”

That’s what Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Union member Alexis Goldstein said on Monday about the CFPB acting director’s new “humility pledge” that examiners with the agency’s Supervision Division will be forced to read to financial institutions before conducting reviews next year.

Several other CFPB Union members joined Goldstein in blasting Vought’s pledge, including treasurer Gabe Hopkins, who said that “whoever wrote this has never even spoken to an examiner before, only been wined and dined by industry lobbyists.”

The lengthy pledge states in part that the CFPB’s “goal is to work collaboratively with the entities to review entities’ processes
for compliance and/or remedy existing problems,” and the agency “is doing so by encouraging self-reporting and resolving issues in Supervision, where feasible, instead of via Enforcement.”

CFPB Union president Cat Farman inquired: “Is this fan fiction I’m reading? What’s next, ‘Russell Vought Tells CFPB Examiners to Serve Tea to Their Wall Street Masters in Tiny French Maid Aprons’?”

“Instead of traumatizing CFPB workers with his roleplay fantasies,” Farman argued, “Vought should resign so we can finally do our jobs protecting Americans from Wall Street fraud again.”

Vought—also the Senate-confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget, a role he previously held during President Donald Trump’s first term—has unsuccessfully tried to shutter the CFPB completely this year.

As the New York Times reported Monday:

The new pledge is, for now, mostly symbolic. Mr. Vought halted nearly all work at the bureau shortly after his arrival in February, and bank examinations have not resumed. The agency’s hundreds of examiners have been told to spend their time closing out all open matters; they are currently barred from initiating new ones.And Mr. Vought has refused to request money for the consumer bureau from the Federal Reserve, which funds its operations. The bureau warned in court filings that it would run out of operating cash early next year.

In a Friday statement announcing the pledge, the Vought-led agency claimed that under the Biden administration, the Supervision Division “was the weaponized arm of the CFPB.”

The agency added that “where these exams were previously done with unnecessary personnel, outrageous travel expenses, and with the thuggery pervasive in prior leadership, they will now be done respectfully, promptly, professionally, and under budget.”

Given that Vought “stopped all supervision exams in 2025, refuses to fund CFPB, and says he’s shutting us down by 2026,” CFPB Union member Doug Wilson asked: “So how will we supervise banks in 2026 if CFPB is closed? How can bank exams be ‘under budget’ if there is no budget?”

Ripping Vought’s pledge and press release as “incredibly disrespectful to Supervision’s dedicated workers,” fellow CFPB Union member Tyler Creighton said that the pair of documents also “misunderstands or misconstrues Supervision’s prior work.”

“Supervision’s workers have always conducted examinations professionally, efficiently, conscientiously, and with a focus on remedying consumer harm,” Creighton said. “We will continue to do so as soon as Donald Trump and Vought end their 10-month suspension of examinations and let us get back to work for the American people.”

Another CFPB Union member, Steve Wheeler, highlighted that “they’re trying to make it sound like it’s groundbreaking to send notifications of exams ahead of time and keep data pulls relevant to the examined area, when those are things we already do.”

Originally proposed by now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the CFPB was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis via the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama.

Warren joined the CFPB Union members in calling out the new pledge, declaring that “Donald Trump is Wall Street first.”

Union member Ravisha “Avi” Kumar pointed out that “under previous administrations, CFPB examiners protected consumers from banks, like Wells Fargo, that incentivized their employees to cut corners and overlook consumer harm. CFPB forced the banks to return that stolen money to consumers.”

“Ironically, under this administration, Vought says he will incentivize examiners to rush jobs (cut corners) and stick to the surface (overlook consumer harm),” Kumar added. “How is that still consumer financial protection?”

The pledge announcement came a day after CFPB officials told staff that much of the agency workforce will be furloughed at the end of the year and that remaining consumer litigation will be sent to the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

“This is Russ Vought’s latest illegal power grab in his ongoing plan to shut down the CFPB and protect CEOs instead of consumers,” said Farman. “CFPB attorneys are afraid DOJ will dismiss these cases.”

“Vought’s already helped Wall Street swindle $18 billion from Americans this year,” the union leader continued. “If Vought is going to keep refusing to fund CFPB in order to illegally dismantle the agency, while he wastes over $5 million of CFPB’s dwindling budget on personal bodyguards, then it’s time for Congress to impeach and remove Russell Vought from power.”

When Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, his foreign policy was a major departure from that of the Biden Administration. While former President Joe Biden aggressively championed an expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and was critical of far-right European parties, Trump isn't shy about praising far-right European figures like Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and France's Marine Le Pen. Trump also has a generally friendlier tone with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Articles published by Politico on December 5 — one by Laura Kayali, the other by Nahal Toosi — examine the hyper-nationalist approach Trump is bringing to U.S. foreign policy, including Europe, in a new 33-page document called the National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

Trump and his administration, Kayali stresses, "blame the EU (European Union) and migration for what they say is imminent, total cultural unravelling in Europe."

Kayali reports, "The explosive claim is made in the U.S. National Security Strategy, which notes Europe has economic problems, but says they are 'eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure' within the next 20 years…. That narrative is likely to resonate deeply among most of Europe's far-right parties, whose electoral programs are primarily based on criticism of the EU, demands for curbs on migration from Muslim-majority and non-European nations, and a patriotic push to overturn their countries' perceived declines."

This "new security strategy," according to Kayali, "offers a clear ideological alignment between" Trump's "populist MAGA movement and Europe's nationalist parties."

According to Kayali, "The U.S. administration — which has developed increasingly closer ties with far-right parties in countries such as Germany and Spain — appears to hint it could help ideologically allied European parties…. The document is a rare formal explanation of Trump's foreign policy worldview by his administration."

Meanwhile, in her article, Toosi notes that the National Security Strategy "appears in line with many of the moves" Trump has "taken in his second term, as well as the priorities of some of his aides."

"That includes deploying significantly more U.S. military prowess to the Western Hemisphere, taking numerous steps to reduce migration to America, pushing for a stronger industrial base in the U.S. and promoting 'Western identity,' including in Europe," Toosi reports. "The strategy even nods to so-called traditional values at times linked to the Christian Right, saying the (Trump) Administration wants 'the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health' and 'an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes.' It mentions the need to have 'growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.'"

The National Security Strategy, according to Toosi, "suggests the president's military buildup in the Western Hemisphere is not a temporary phenomenon."

"That buildup, which has included controversial military strikes against boats allegedly carrying drugs, has been cast by the administration as a way to fight cartels. But the administration also hopes the buildup could help pressure Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to step down," Toosi explains. "The strategy also specifically calls for 'a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.'"

Read Laura Kayali's full article for Politico at this link and Nahal Toosi's Politico reporting here.