Rita's Spur to Action

I wanted to pass on some words from Robert Reich on Trump’s recent activation of the American military in Los Angeles…

“Friends,

The man who launched an attempted coup on the United States in 2020 and instigated an insurrection at the Capitol that resulted in five deaths now claims that people in Los Angeles are launching an insurrection. They’re not.

Trump doesn’t give a damn whether the troops are necessary. Nor does he care how many people are injured or even killed in his raid on Los Angeles. The show of military force is the point. It gives him the appearance of power.

Like any bully, Trump is fundamentally a coward. Humiliated by China, Harvard, the Supreme Court, Elon Musk, and the federal courts, Trump has launched a war inside America on vulnerable people inside America, in a place — California — most of whose inhabitants loathe him.

The bully-in-chief has appointed a bunch of tin-pot bullies to every position of lethal force in the federal government — and is now activating them.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristy Noam is a Trump stooge seemingly without understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears willing to go along with whatever Trump wants. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is a maniacal xenophobe. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a brain-dead Trump sycophant. Border czar Tom Homan is a toady who has not ruled out arresting California’s leaders if they obstruct federal law enforcement.

The central struggle of civilization has always been to stop brutality. Unless we prevent the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker, none of us is safe.

Unless the bullies are stopped, an entire society — even the world — can descend into chaos.

Our duty is to stop brutality. Our responsibility is to hold the powerful accountable. Our challenge is to stand up to abuses of power. Our moral obligation is to protect the vulnerable.”

Notes:

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/the-dictators-revenge?r=tsm7z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.”

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.”

Newsom urged Americans to stand up for the country. “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he said. “But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment,” Newsom said.

“Do not give in to him.”

Notes:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-165684305

Never in the history of America has there been a president as crooked, dishonest, and costly to the American public as is Donald J. Trump.

He is a traitor to his people and his country. The President and his family are lining their pockets with gold. He is using the position of the presidency to gain the favor and dollars of billionaires and governments across the world.

First, “the Trump Organization, led by the president’s two oldest sons, has… significantly expanded its Middle East footprint, with new ventures in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. These include a Trump International Hotel & Tower in Dubai, a golf resort in Doha with Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund’s real estate arm, a Trump Tower in Jeddah, and a hotel under construction in Muscat.”

Second, Amazon has struck an exorbidant $40 million dollar deal to license a “behind-the-scenes,” vanity documentary about first lady, Melania Trump.

Third, the Trump family has plans to open an exclsive, invite-only club, with membership fees of $500k, called The Executive Branch in Washington, D.C. — a club where those the Trump family deems worthy enough and rich enough have the chance to rub elbows with the current first family and top administration officals.

Lastly, in just his first 114 days, Trump has spent more than $30 million towards golf trips. And who is paying for those trips? 

Us. 

Our hard earned tax dollars go towards every hole in one, missed hole, drive back and forth on the course when the president needs a day off.

Everyone, get ready to vote to elect candidates in the upcoming elections, whether Democrats or Republicans, whose only interests lie in serving the people of the United States of America. 

Folks, it is essential we vote for candidates who will serve the people and not “kiss-the-ring” of a crooked president.

Notes:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-franchise-expanding-middle-east-are-ethical-concerns-rcna206777

Donald Trump, in one fell swoop, wants to destroy the entire educational system of the United States and prevent any foreign students from applying to or attending American universities. He is such an idiot. He doesn’t understand that, “more than 1.1 million international students who studied in the United States last year contributed nearly $44 billion to the U.S. economy during [just the] 2023-24 school year, according to nonpartisan nonprofit NAFSA, the Association of International Educators — from $10 million in Alaska to more than $6 billion in California — and supported more than 378,000 jobs.”

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/05/28/international-students-economic-impact-trump-harvard/#

This is an important message from Robert Reich’s newsletter. Pleas take action: protest! Call your senators!

“Friends,

One of my purposes in sending you this daily letter is to give you the truth about an important issue that Trump and his lapdogs in Congress are demagoguing — so you can spread the truth. 

Right now, the Senate is taking up Trump’s “Big Beautiful budget bill” (really a Big Bad Ugly Bill) that just emerged from the House. 

If enacted, it would be the largest redistribution of income in the nation’s history — from the poor and working class to the rich and super-rich. 

How? The tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy. A major source of funding is at least $715 billion of cuts in health care spending, mostly from Medicaid. 

It also contains a poison pill that would remove the power of federal courts to hold officials in contempt of court — fining or imprisoning them if they fail to follow court orders. As the court push back against Trump, this is a critical power. 

The bill cuts Medicaid spending by requiring Medicaid recipients to work. 

Republicans are spreading lies about this work requirement. 

Here are the facts you need to know — and share: 

1. 64 percent of adult Medicaid recipients already work.

Many recipients work in jobs that don’t typically offer health insurance and pay little — which makes Medicaid vital. These people aren’t freeloaders mooching off the system, as Republicans claim. They’re barely scraping by.

2. Adults on Medicaid who aren’t working have good reasons not to. 

— 12% are primary caregivers. 

— 10% have an illness or disability. 

— 7 % are attending school.

3. So, 93 percent of all Medicaid recipients either already working or having good reason not to. 

The entire work requirement would affect 7 percent at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.

4. The work requirement kicks eligible people Medicaid because of its burdensome and confusing reporting requirements. 

It’s not really meant to put people to work. It’s a shady way of kicking people off Medicaid to fund tax cuts mainly for the wealthy.

In Arkansas, which tried a work requirement for Medicaid, more than 18,000 people who were eligible lost coverage mainly because of the paperwork reporting hoops they had to jump through.

5. When Arkansas enacted work requirements, there was no significant change in employment rates. 

Because, again, Medicaid recipients already have high rates of employmentto begin with.

6. If Republicans really want to put people to work, they’d make it easierto get Medicaid — not harder. 

After Ohio expanded Medicaid, enrollees had an easier time finding and holding down a job. 

Access to healthcare means people can manage chronic conditions, afford medication, or receive mental health treatment — all of which helps people keep their jobs.

Republicans are spouting lies about a work requirement for Medicaid because they’re really trying to push eligible people off it — to help finance their big tax cut mainly for the rich. 

Senate Republicans can afford to lose only three Republican votes. Otherwise, the Big Bad Ugly Bill is dead. Please share these facts.”

“Trump’s tariff machinations—he has moved them more than 50 times since he took office—are also enriching the Trump family. Last week, Trump’s son Eric Trump joined Vietnam’s prime minister Pham Minh Chinh in a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5 billion luxury real estate development with three 18-hole golf courses outside the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

Vietnam sends more of its exports to the United States than to any other country, and after Trump hit Vietnam with 46% tariffs, top officials in Vietnam ignored the country’s own laws to ink a hurried deal with the Trumps to head the tariffs off. The Trump Organization is also cutting deals in Serbia, Indonesia, and the Middle East.”

Aren’t there limits to the use of Presidential powers to make personal deals to line one’s own pockets while in office?

Although it is not expressly illegal for the president to financially benefit himself or his family from using said powers, it ought to be.

These wavering tariffs and foreign deals with his organization prove that Trump is only out to increase his wealth and those around him

Notes:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-164704462

It is imperative to check out the rise of Hitler in the 1930’s and the subsequent conquest and destruction of Germany and the rest of Europe. He is Trump’s model for the destruction of America. Kings and dictators require an illiterate public (ex. Slaveholders prohibiting the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burning books). Trump’s withdrawal of funding from American Universities is his attempt to destroy American literacy, create an ignorant public, and to further cement himself as king. 

We the people must take immediate action! FORCE the Congress, the Supreme Court, and other federal courts to act. Save the United States of America!

Nobody wins in a war. 

Palestinians are starving because their government has failed them in arriving at a positive peace agreement with Israel. Instead, they have kidnapped Israelis, reluctantly returned dead bodies, and supported the Hamas. Starvation is intolerable but so is the failure to do what is necessary to achieve a ceasfire and peace. The solution is simple: return the Israeli prisoners taken by the Palestinians, guarantee a ceasefire, and agree to work on a two state solution which will be perminent. 

This seems like a simple solution to the question of famine. Why place all the blame on the Israelis? The Palestinians have brought the war upon themselves. Netanyahu has no future at home in Israel and therefore his sole aim is to end the power of Hamas and the Palestinians. Between the two, the war in the Middle East may go on forever, unless both sides find leaders who can negotiate a reasonable solution. If this can’t be done, children will starve as a result of their failure. 

Trump’s idiocy requesting women to have more children and graciously giving them a $5,000 baby bonus, while touting that he wants to be known as the “fertilization president,” is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to showcasing his lack of empathy, understanding, and care for women and children in this country. He and his partner Elon Musk (that idiot with 14 children) are heartless and brainless tyrants.

“According to a new report by ProPublica, billions of dollars in funding for poor schools, for school meals, and for school safety have been slashed by Trump and Musk.

The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so their babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired.

The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been decimated.

The Department of Agriculture has canceled more than $600 million in grants to farm-to-school programs that had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias.

In addition, Trump’s new budget includes staggering cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), which provides food assistance to 1 in 5 children. It would also alter the school meal programs, making it more likely that low-income, eligible children miss out on meals.

Head Start preschools are being shut down.

The Education Department just halted $1 billion for mental health services for children. As a result, schools will no longer be able to hire psychologists, counselors, and mental health workers. The department says that the programs are no longer in ‘the best interest of the federal government.’

Since when has that been the criterion? Programs should be in the best interest of children.

The Department of Health and Human Services has dismissed all staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually to the states to run their child welfare, day care, foster care, and adoption systems, including birth family visitation, caseworker training, and more.”

It took years to construct these programs, and in practically, one fell swoop, Trump and Musk heartlessly and thoughtlessly destroyed them.

Notes:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-terrible-truth-about-the-fertilization?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=365422&post_id=161992676&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=tsm7z&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

When Biden was in office, it was largely agreed that the economy was doing well, that America’s economy flourished and that under his administration, “the U.S. had added 16 million jobs, unemployment was at its lowest rate in 50 years, real wages for the bottom 80% of Americans were increasing, and inflation levels had come down almost to the Federal Reserve’s target from their highs during the post-shutdown shocks.”

In three months, Trump has managed to turn all of this around.

He has,”…trashe[d] human rights, undermine[d] our alliances, threaten[ed] the independence of our universities and the press, stymie[d] progress on climate change, decimate[d] our civil service, shaft[ed] the poor, harm[ed] the working class, worsen[ed] the economy, and [left] much of our government in tatters.”

Economists expect the confusion and uncertainty of Trump’s tariffs to hurt growth more broadly in the second quarter of 2025 as container ships from China stop arriving in the U.S. in early to mid-May, about a month after Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” imposed a 145% tariff on goods from that country. 

And this is only his first four months in office.