The Greene County Democrat begins a new column this week entitled Trump Atrocities Report (TAR) in which we will explain some of the outrageously negative and harmful actions taken by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Administration. The motivation for this column came from a discussion at a recent meeting of the Save Ourselves Movement for Justice and Democracy, an Alabama collaborative of 40 social justice organizations.
Some of these actions will be legislative changes, overzealous cuts in Federal regulations, appointees that are unqualified or chosen to destroy the government function they were asked to head up and official statements that do not make sense or are ‘alternative truths’.
Some of the atrocities are where President Trump or members of his family will get a financial benefit from their position or have a clear conflict of interest.
We are starting with some blatant examples of atrocious conduct by Trump. We already have a long list of items to make this a weekly column.
We hope you will clip out this column and share it with your friends especially those working people and women who voted for Trump thinking he would improve their lives. We want to educate and persuade them that they made a grave mistake in voting for Trump and his supporters so that they will not repeat their error in future elections.
Atrocity No. 1: Selecting a cabinet of millionaires and billionaires who are unqualified and chosen to destroy the department or agency they were nominated by Trump to lead. A few examples:
a. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions for Attorney General. Sessions has opposed voting rights, civil rights, womens rights, LGBTQ rights and most human rights. He has been nominated to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to enforce the laws protecting these rights that he does not believe in.
b. Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. She does not support public schools, never personally attended a public school and did not send her children to public schools. She has never used the Pell grant or college student loan programs she has been asked to administer. She did make $200 million in campaign contributions to Republican lawmakers in the past five years, which paved the way for her confirmation.
c. Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Pruitt is a “climate change denier” who has sued the EPA twenty times to remove regulations on clean air, water and nature as Oklahoma Attorney General.
2. Atrocity No. 2: Removing the Obama regulations that prevented the mentally ill from securing a permit to own a gun. This is the first of many regulatory changes dictated by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which will make our nation a more dangerous place to live!
3. Atrocity No. 3: The ‘Muslim Ban’, which prevents visitors from seven Mideast countries from entering the United States. This is part of Trump’s unconstitutional attack on immigration and refugee relief. More than 60,000 legal visitors and H-1B visa holders were stopped from entering the country and there was chaos at the nation’s airports, until Federal courts intervened to correct this injustice. This action gives terrorist organizations a “trump card” in recruiting more members and has the opposite effect of keeping us safe!
4. Atrocity No. 4: Removing regulations that required transparency in the payments by American corporations to foreign governments. This change was enacted on the day that former Exxon-Mobil Oil CEO, Rex Tillerson was elevated to become Secretary of State. Someone needs to explain how this regulation permitting oil and gas companies to hide bribes to foreign governments helps American workers to get more jobs!