Another day, another round of poorly phrased and thought out and thoroughly muddled executive orders that have ping ponged back and forth all day between seeming to pause funding for such vital programs as Medicaid, Head Start, SNAP, WIC and the like and then are said to exclude the more politically popular programs that support individuals. At the same time, state governments report that they cannot access the federal websites that allow them to actually track that payments have been received. I am assuming the obfuscation and shockwaves of chaos through federal and state bureaucracy are deliberate and are as much a part of the message as any actual end results. a lot of things will work themselves out over the next few weeks. In the meantime, those who depend on stable federal funding for housing, health care, food and the like will just have to remain on tenterhooks.
Are you able to live independently as a senior due to reduced rent granted through Section 8 housing? The rent differential may be paid, it may not. If not, the owner of your building might put it to more profitable use. Do you depend on meals on wheels because you can no longer shop or cook? The grants coming to your area agency on aging which are dispersed to cover the costs of food, preparation, and distribution might or might not be in place. Is a clinical trial providing you with life saving medicine under a federal grant? Sorry, will that be Mastercard or Visa? Do you get your HIV medications with aid from the Ryan White act? That’s too entwined with LGBTQ+ issues to be allowed. I don’t know if any or all of these will actually continue but I’m not holding my breath for the current administration to do the right thing by anyone.
The new regime is unleashing forces that they probably don’t understand and are unlikely to be able to control. Wishful thinking and fervent belief do not contravene the laws of biology, physics and economics. I don’t know what the end game is. There are a few suggestions floating around out there. One is that there is a concerted push to put society under such strain that it becomes inevitable that street violence breaks out on either the right or the left and that becomes the excuse to activate the military, declare martial law and suspend the constitution. Another is that it’s an attempt to pretty much undo the bureaucratic state as built since World War II and return to government as it existed pre-FDR where basically there were no safety nets and you were on your own. A side effect of this is going to be to rigidly restore a social caste system where anyone not a cis heterosexual Christian European heritage male is relegated to other status and social rules and norms will strongly enforce this. An acquaintance was attacked by a gang of white folk at a rural gas station today for having a rainbow sticker on his car. The large dog in his car made sure he was unharmed but it’s behavior that’s going to become more and more common. As a gay man who lived as an adult through the 80s, I’m used to that sort of thing and have always maintained a certain sense of alertness, even in supposedly safe spaces but the younger generation doesn’t have the life experience to really understand the dangers that are coming.
I’m rather disgusted by both political parties. On the one side, there is an inexcusable amount of silence and lack of pushback. Where is the DNC in terms of being on air and in print explaining exactly what each of these new orders is going to mean in the lives of average Americans? Why are they not challenging and making the administration own every harmful decision? I’ve seen some tweets from AOC and a couple of other muted responses from individuals but very little from the party as a whole. And it’s not like they haven’t had access to the Project 2025 handbook for a couple of years and had time to prepare for what was obviously coming. If they thought ‘Oh, they’ll never actually do that’, more fool them. On the other, there is a systems of checks and balances to keep the three branches of government from supposedly ever devolving into a unitary executive (which the founders would have regarded as tyranny). One of the chief means for the legislative to check the executive is in the power of the purse. The Republican majority have apparently rolled over and offered that particular one up to the executive without so much as a boop on the nose. I also wonder a great deal about the adults in the room on the R side who have spent the last forty years choosing party over country and wondering if they actually approve of current actions when the television cameras are off (I’m looking at you Mitch McConnell) or if they’re quietly going to slink off to their country manses and enjoy what remains of their declining years.
I’ve been told there’s an email in my VA work email inbox telling me that if I resign my position before February 6th, I will be paid through the end of the fiscal year (September 30th). I’m planning on ignoring it. I’ve got work to do taking care of a vulnerable veteran population that may have some of the rugs pulled out from under them. I won’t be in the least bit surprised, however, if sometime after February 6th, some officious administration official demands my removal. I’ve been critical of the present regime’s policies in person and in print far too long; the first volume of my The Accidental Plague Diaries is a blow by blow encounter of the failures of the first Trump administration’s failures with the pandemic. The VA was never part of my retirement planning, it’s gravy so I don’t really care that much what happens. I’ll stay until I reach my planned retirement date or until I am asked to do something by the federal government that breaches my professional ethics or personal moral code. On that day, I will make my fond farewells and, given the enormous shortage of geriatricians, good luck to the VA in finding and hiring a replacement.
Neither you nor I can do anything about or fix any of this. Circle your wagons. Shelter those you can. Take care of yourself. Work closely with those who believe as you do to be ready to advocate for change when the winds shift, as they always do.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 