Trump’s evil executive orders
We know from his last term that Donald Trump’s “achievements” were of the lazy variety. His huge tax cut benefiting the rich, and especially Trump’s beloved One Percent, required only a signature. The Republican Congress took care of the details. Appointments of federal judges and Supreme Court nominations were the work of sitting in a chair and agreeing to the most fascistic in a list of fascists. Trump’s easy-to-scale, ineffectual aluminium “wall” between Mexico and the United States was the half-assed “work” of indolence. Very little of it was ever finished and, of course, Mexico never paid for it.
It is true that Operation Warp Speed delivered the first Covid vaccine in record time. But that was the work of scientists, not Trump. Trump’s “contributions” actually cost lives. Thanks to Trump’s paradoxical support of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, deaths from Covid-19 were over-represented by MAGA Republicans, many of whom refused the vaccine because Trump encouraged them to. Come to think of it, since a majority of MAGA Republicans are opposed to vaccines, in deference to them I won’t put Operation Warp Speed in Trump’s “achievement” column. I’m sure they’d prefer it that way.
This time around, one item on Trump’s first-day-in-office agenda, the one when he’s presumably going to declare himself dictator (for just one day only, of course), is for Trump to sign an executive order kicking transgender service members out of the military. Currently that includes 15,000 troops, including officers in key positions.
Rachel Branaman, executive director of Modern Military Association of America, told The New York Times that banning transgender recruits and serving personnel “would undermine the readiness of the military and create an even greater recruitment and retention crisis, not to mention signalling vulnerability to America’s adversaries.” Branaman added, “Abruptly discharging 15,000-plus service members, especially given that the military’s recruiting targets fell short by 41,000 recruits last year, adds administrative burdens to warfighting units, harms unit cohesion, and aggravates critical skill gaps. There would be a significant financial cost, as well as a loss of experience and leadership that will take possibly 20 years and billions of dollars to replace.”
Of course, these are subtleties. The Republican lie that Kamala Harris wanted to make gender-affirming care in prisons for transgender people a major part of her agenda if elected president worked exactly as intended. Millions of stupid people believed them and voted for the fascist. Now that fascist has his work cut out for him. As observed, on his way to the golf course, he’s now going to have to sign an executive order booting hard-working, patriotic transgender human beings out of their jobs. They won’t even have the privilege of getting an honourable discharge. Their discharge papers will be marked “medical discharge.”
In fact, the Trump transition team is preparing a whole stack of evil executive orders for Trump to sign as soon as he’s promised to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” With his fingers crossed behind his back, of course. The poor man is probably going to get writer’s cramp. We hope it doesn’t hurt his golf game. He may have to cheat more than usual. Whatever the case, brothers and sisters, take care of yourselves, and if you can, take care of someone else too. And remember to always take care of our only planet.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.