religious right

U.S. President Donald Trump's foes have been consistently critical of his makeover proposals for the Washington, DC area, from a White House ballroom to the Kennedy Center to a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. And Trump is drawing scathing criticism for the damage inflicted on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Now, according to the Daily Beast, a major Trump loyalist — Project 2025 author Dennis Kirk — will likely be in charge of any possible investigation of the "Reflecting Pool fiasco."

"Donald Trump is planning to put one of his most reliably right-wing goons in charge of any eventual investigation into his botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool," journalist William Vaillancourt reports in the Daily Beast. "The 80-year-old president personally oversaw the $16 million project to refurbish the DC landmark, only to watch as the waters turned slimy green and the pool lining split. He quickly blamed the damage on vandalism, even though his handpicked DC prosecutor couldn't make any charges stick and passed the blame to Doug Burgum's Interior Department, which was in charge of the refurb."

Trump, Vaillancourt notes, has nominated Kirk "to run the Interior Department's Inspector General Office — the watchdog that will oversee any investigation."

In 2024, Project 2025 was the Heritage Foundation's in-depth blueprint for a second Trump administration. Trump, during the 2024 presidential race, distanced himself from the highly controversial document. But critics countered that Project 2025 was written by some of Trump's closest allies — including Kirk.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) is a scathing opponent of the Kirk nomination, attacking him as a "fake and fraudulent watchdog."

In an August 5 post on his website, Huffman said of Kirk, "Each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump. This man helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce. Now, he sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior, the department that manages our national parks, public lands, Tribal programs, and now under Trump, gold-slathered statues and a botched Reflecting Pool renovation. That same office is weighing serious ethics investigations into senior officials in this administration. It's no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump's cronies still have reason to fear."

Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, is lambasting the Kirk nomination as well — noting the firing of for Interior Department Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt.

Weiss, in an official statement, warned, "Interior's watchdog was fired, left vacant for 18 months, and is now hosting one of the architects of Project 2025. At least five investigation requests from members of Congress are sitting in that office right now, and its integrity has been compromised. Congress cannot outsource its constitutional oversight duty to an inspector general’s office taken over by the White House."

President Donald Trump has created a White House where "the buck never stops with the people who actually hold power," "a new piece from MS NOW argued, and it is a "master class" in endless blame that his Cabinet is taking to heart.

In a piece published Tuesday morning, reporter Hayes Brown detailed how Trump has made "deflecting blame for mistakes, lapses and failures ... completely normal," despite the long tradition of presidents accepting blame for their administration's shortcomings. Instead, his growing list of failed policies and ideas has been pinned on a predictable cast of scapegoats, including "underlings; Democrats (in general or specific); strawmen of any political stripe; or, in a pinch, other key members of the administration."

No mounting failure has proven more ripe for dismissal than his abysmal popularity and the effect it is set to have on the GOP in the midterms.

"Trump put on a master class of the technique during an interview with Punchbowl News last week," Brown wrote. "His abysmal polling numbers and string of unforced errors have threatened the GOP’s chances of holding control of Congress after the midterm elections. Trump insisted, though, that he isn’t the source of the problem: 'The question is, will they vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you. … They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.'”

In response, Trump's Cabinet has proven they are "willing to take his lessons to heart," even if none of them have quite mastered the art of deflection as the president has. Under the president's model, officials have learned that "blame can be spread laterally among equals, down toward subordinates or even backward against the flow of time, but never up to the top," often leaving "Federal staffers down the chain" unable to fight back against accusations.

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been a skilled student in his time in office," Brown continued. "In the early days of the war against Iran, the Pentagon chief was full of bravado and happy to take credit for what he claimed was a swift, decisive victory. As the conflict stretched out and munitions stockpiles have reportedly been massively depleted, he’s sought to duck any criticism. While begging Congress for a cash infusion to restore the military’s weapons supply, Hegseth both denied that there is even a shortage and also blamed the Biden administration for 'four years of underinvestment and mismanagement.'”

He concluded later: "Trump’s abdication of this tenet has fostered this fecundity of finger pointing. Beyond the unnecessary drama it engenders, it is simply no way to run a government. Without accountability, failures are left to fester instead of getting fixed. Trump has crafted an administration that follows his example in shirking responsibility, placing self-interest above the interests of the nation. The buck stops nowhere in Trump’s White House."

On Monday evening, August 10, the Washington Post and the New York Times both reported that because of an "Iranian assassination threat," U.S. President Donald Trump secretly flew from Turkey in July on an alternate military aircraft. White House officials, in July, told reporters that Trump was flying on Air Force One, but according to the Post and the Times, that aircraft was used as a decoy when Trump was really on a different aircraft. And according to journalist Chris Geidner, this reporting raises "big questions about the recent NYT subpoenas."

The Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) drew vehement criticism from many journalists for subpoenas of Times journalists, who denounced the subpoenas as an intimidation tactic. The DOJ, however, withdrew the subpoenas on July 23.

According to Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmitt and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, "Top administration officials engaged in an elaborate deception to spirit President Trump out of Turkey during the NATO Summit there last month, transporting him in a catering container to a military jet because of a threat against him and Air Force One from Iran, two senior U.S. officials said on Monday."

Geider, in his Law Dork blog, argues that reporting from the Times (which described the use of a decoy plane as an "elaborate ruse") and Post speaks volumes about Trump's adversarial relationship with the press.

"This is a story about Trump's Qatari-donated 'new' Air Force One, the 'old' Air Force One, and a secret third plane, identified by the Post as 'an Air Force C-32A,'" Geidner explains. "It's also a story about the way the Trump administration lies to the public and to the press, as well as how senior administration officials — up to and including Trump — might have been willing to go so far as to put the lives of others, including members of the media, at risk. Finally, it's a story of how the Trump administration quickly went on the offense in the aftermath of the 'ruse' — subpoenaing some of the first reporters who dove into what was happening."

Geidner elaborates, "The Times had reported, on July 8, that the use of the old Air Force One was a 'security precaution' in Turkey and then reported, on July 9, that the Qatari-donated jet 'lacks the same defensive countermeasures' as the old Air Force One. The next day, the Trump administration — via the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York — subpoenaed Times journalists, leading to the high-profile fight that ended with the office withdrawing the subpoenas, and others subsequently issued for phone records, at a hearing before a skeptical judge on July 23."

Geidner argues that "it appears that the Times is reporting that it believes the Trump administration purposely misled reporters to publish information that the administration believed could make those reporters the target of an attack."

"Think about the implications of this — 'The Trump administration purposely misled reporters to publish information that the administration believed could make those reporters the target of an attack' — if it is true," Geidner emphasizes. "If that is what happened, the subpoenas issued by then-U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton's office in the Southern District of New York raise even more essential questions about what the Trump administration, the Justice Department, SDNY, USAO, and Clayton were doing here — and why."

President Donald Trump has long craved Greenland, a large island in the North Atlantic controlled by Denmark. He has played a game of chicken by threatening to conquer the island and even vowed at a July NATO summit in Ankara to take Greenland for the United States. He has repeatedly posted a meme of his face acquisitively looming over a Greenlandic village with the slogan “Hello Greenland!”

Now Greenland Energy, a company created by Trump supporter Larry Swets of Texas last year in the midst of Trump’s imperialist rhetoric toward the island, has started moving drilling equipment to East Greenland’s Arctic basin. They claim they will mine $1 trillion in crude oil beneath the Jameson Land region. Both Denmark and Greenland are protesting. And, as one prominent TV news anchor pointed out, America may have in effect begun to invade Greenland.

“The minister in charge of mineral resources in the Greenland government did a local interview in Greenland in which he said he was absolutely sure this American oil company would never break the law and try to start this drilling project without permission,” MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow explained. “Should that happen, he said, Greenland has the means to stop their actions. He said, ‘This is a society governed by the rule of law, so I have some broad-shouldered men in black uniforms in the first instance who can help me deal with some illegal activities if I ask for them’ — by which he means, I think, the Greenlandic police. Then he said, ‘Ultimately, I'm sure that the Arctic Command will also contribute’ — by which he means the Danish military would also, he believes, intervene to stop this American oil company from trying to drill for oil in Greenland without any permission to do so.”

Maddow added, “So you put all this together: this Trump-aligned oil company based in Texas saying, ‘We're going to drill for oil in Greenland.’ Greenland saying, ‘Oh, no, you're not.’ The company going ahead and dropping off their drilling equipment anyway. Local residents saying, ‘We'll fight tooth and nail.’ The local government saying, ‘We'll use the police, we'll use the Danish military.’ You put it all together, and it kind of seems like we're invading Greenland. I mean, this company has somehow hornswoggled itself into a partnership with Dr. Phil to make what sure looks like propaganda TV shows about this ‘heroic and exciting’ oil-drilling project — which the government of Greenland says is illegal, and which they don't have permission to carry out.”

Ultimately she asked, “Honestly — is this how we invade Greenland? With Dr. Phil doing a ride-along, like he did with ICE [which Greenland Energy says they are going to do]? All because a Trump donor billionaire says he needs to drill this oil, and who cares what this little country says?”

If America invades Greenland, the European Union could activate its Anti-Coercion Instrument, a series of boycotts and trade restrictions that would effectively devastate America’s economy in retaliation for violating the sovereignty of European nations.

"The EU’s single market counts roughly 450 million consumers," wrote the German Marshall Fund's Antonia Wunnerlich and Georgina Wright in February. "As a result, these tools can have significant extraterritorial impact, even targeting foreign businesses without European subsidiaries. US and Chinese services firms are particularly exposed because their home countries run sizeable services surpluses with the EU."

Additionally, Greenland’s ice sheet is melting as a result of man-made climate change, which is destabilizing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. If the situation worsens, it could lead to rising sea levels, widespread floods, severe storms and other extreme weather events.

“That rate of Greenland melt is approaching or exceeding rates of melt during natural warming periods over the past 12,000 years is not surprising,” Michael Mann, at the time a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, told this journalist for Salon in 2020. “It’s what I would expect given the evidence we have already.” He also said that one of his studies found “evidence of the freshening of the sub-polar North Atlantic that we would expect as Greenland continues to melt. That freshening is reducing the stratification of the ocean and likely slowing down the ‘conveyor belt’ ocean circulation (the real-world equivalent of the ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ scenario) showing how these potentially threshold-like climate responses are potentially linked.”

Mann added, “As I am fond of saying, uncertainty is not our friend. It’s cutting against us, not in our favor, as we see and learn more.”

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President Donald Trump is accusing Democrats of being “communists” and “socialists,” but as a former Republican National Committee chair pointed out on Monday, he supports socialist policies… as long as they benefit Republican constituencies like farmers.

“People fundamentally do not understand socialism,” MS NOW commentator and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele said on Monday. “They do not understand communism. What is it — the median grade level in the United States is eighth grade. Okay?

We're not teaching civics. We're not teaching world history. We're not teaching the fundamentals of how all of this comes together. So these terms from the '30s, '40s, and '50s are being thrown out into the ecosystem.”

He then mentioned Trump’s proposed $17.3 billion bailout to farmers, a group that has been disproportionately economically harmed by his tariffs, his mass deportations and his war against Iran.

“Y'all know the Farm Bill is socialism; y'all know that, right?” Steele said. “I mean, when you start talking about socialism, it's socialism for you. It's not socialism when I'm accessing the system and I'm getting that SNAP check, and I'm getting that welfare check, and I'm getting that free lunch program, and I'm getting those things that, because I cannot afford it, are part of a safety net. And I wish we would just fundamentally get off our lazy behinds and start understanding how this government uses all of those tools to provide for its citizens.”

Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist and professor of cognitive science at the University of Bristol who has written about the psychology of MAGA voters, spoke with AlterNet about the double standard used by pro-Trump farmers who insist on a bailout for themselves but oppose welfare for other groups.

“There's so much tied up in this,” Lewandowsky told AlterNet when explaining farmers who only believe that a social safety net should exist for themselves. “There's latent racism. There's religion. There's the general conservative idea that poor people are — it's their fault, they're just lazy, everybody is responsible for what happens to them… except me, because I'm a farmer, and therefore I'm not lazy, and I've tried everything, and I deserve a subsidy.”

Ultimately he attributed it to “an angle of racism that I think is underlying pretty much all of this, and misogyny” in terms of how they view who should and should not receive benefits. “If you sort of give an instrument to people that measures their racism and misogyny, well, it tells you about who they're going to vote for and all that kind of stuff pretty well.”

Speaking with AlterNet in June, economist Ed Gresser — Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute — pointed out that farmers’ current economic woes can be specifically and largely linked to Trump’s tariffs.

“Tariffs have been quite bad for farmers in two ways,” Gresser said. “One is that they have led to reactions against American products overseas, sometimes by governments and sometimes by public opinion. In a typical year, American agriculture exports about $180 billion worth of stuff that typically makes up about one-fifth of US farm income. So it's quite a lot: half the exports go to, or at least historically went to, China, Canada, and Mexico.”

Because of Trump’s tariffs, farmers have been harmed in all of those markets, which is why they now need a bailout.

“The exports to China have shriveled up because the Chinese retaliated very hard and hit back again directly against American farmers,” Gresser told AlterNet. “Mexico has kind of held up. Canada is off, not so much because the government of Canada has taken any particular steps but because Canadians have looked for American goods so as not to buy them.”

He concluded that “the tariff program has badly screwed over American farmers” and said "farmers are definitely in trouble."

"I mean, they've lost a lot of income,” Gresser said. “There's been a big increase in farm bankruptcies. The idea that the US government would respond to that in the abstract is not a terrible one in my opinion.”

Despite the impact of tariffs on farmers’ livelihoods, most still support Trump and instead have pivoted to lobbying for the $17.3 billion bailout.

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