We Are Watching

The Food and Farm Caucus and associated volunteers have committed themselves to “watching the Trump Administration carefully”.

We Are Watching is an executive summary of Mr. Trump actions and those of his enablers —- winnowing away the chaff to see the kernels of greed and malevolence that drives his movement. Entries are footnoted so you can verify the facts and read more.

Yes, Mr. Trump, we are watching (banner photo courtesy of Charl Durand on unsplash)

This service is intended to help us all see the patterns and keep a clear eye as we move through these next four years. We hope Kansas Democrats will find this useful while getting ready to contact their representatives or write their letter to the editor.

The list purposefully avoids all the handwringing, speculation, and postscripts from talking heads —- we are watching the actions and charting the patterns. We started at Election Day and will continue until we’ve pulled him away from power.

Here is a snapshot, January 1st to 7th (always presented newest date first):

Jan 2025

7 - In a rambling hour-long press conference at Mar-A-Lago, our new Napolean says he will use tarrifs against Denmark to pressure them to sell Greenland and continued his nonsense about merging the US and Canada. That and intangible bellicose rhetoric towards Hamas and a proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Whining about Jack Smith and the legal accountability he faces. Not much regarding the platform he ran on. (pbs; and this slate author suggests the real reason Don is hooked on Greenland)

6 – VP Kamala Harris presides over the certification of ballots and announces Donald Trump as the next President. No riots. (npr)

6 - A federal judge in New York City said that Rudy Giuliani was in contempt of court for failing to be responsive about assets he must turn over to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to the two Georgia election workers he defamed as part of Trump’s 2020 phony “stop the steal” effort. (pbs)

6 – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would step down and called for new elections. Trump continued his trolling campaign of suggesting Canada should become the 51st state. (forbes)

3 - Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana won reelection to the House speakership after overcoming the threat of GOP holdouts from the extreme right. Trump had given his support. (pbs)

2 - President Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, bipartisan leaders of the January 6 Select Committee, who investigated Trump’s efforts to use deception and violence to overturn the 2020 election. (pbs)

1 - Trump falsely claims that the man who killed 14 in a New Orleans bomb attack on New Years Eve had entered the US illegally and then tried to claim “blood on the hands of the Biden administration”. The bomber, apparently radicalized by ISIS, was an Army veteran and US citizen who lived in Texas and was killed in a shoot-out with police. (pbs)