What Would Nellis Say?

where once there was honor​

By Rick Stiller​​​​

​​

​

Just three weeks into Trump’s second term, the nation is reeling in confusion from the avalanche of cruel, hateful, and illegal edicts and commands pouring out of the White House that will affect every household in the nation…well, except the bazillionaires who have hijacked our government for their own benefit.

 

The tariff bluff against Mexico and Canada was an embarrassing bust for the president, and China is threatening to retaliate with new duties on American imports. Instead of using tariffs to goad adversaries or reluctant partners into deals and compromise, he chose to trash stable and beneficial accords with our three biggest trading partners. When those independent nations refused his demands, he backed down, claiming they would be reimposed in a month if he did not get his way. We doubt that we will ever hear about them again, but he substituted a 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum.

 

Meanwhile, Trump loosed Elon Musk (a South African-born private citizen who has become an unelected acting president with more than $64 billion in business contracts with the U.S. government, has no legitimate authority in the administration, and answers to no one except Trump) to reduce the size of the federal workforce, eliminate waste and promote “efficiency” without oversite by or coordination with any “official” agency. 

 

Musk’s first attempt to slash the government payroll was an email to two million federal employees, the workers who make our government function, offering “deferred resignation” options to leave their positions with full pay until September 30th. A federal judge has blocked his scheme for the moment, but not before sixty-five thousand accepted his offer. Their absence will cripple vital services the American people depend on.

 

Musk and his band of underage, inexperienced, and unvetted pranksters have free rein to paw through the computer systems of our government’s most sensitive agencies. (One of his minions, who goes by the handle “Big Balls”, boasted online that he was “racist before it was cool.”)

 

The Washington Post noted that officials at dozens of federal agencies had raised concerns or refused to grant access to secure systems to Musk’s intrusive meddling, contending that it is illegal. The first of those agencies included the “Treasury Department, the Education Department, Defense Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others,” as well as the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to find and possibly purge every federal employee who worked on any January 6th investigations. 

 

Another justice blocked the administration’s proposed public release of all the names of agents and attorneys who worked on the investigation, which would invite retribution by more than fifteen-hundred rioters convicted and released under Trump’s mass pardon.

 

The squad of hackers “actually have access to the U.S. Treasury’s Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” according to Wired Magazine. “These systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy or $5.45 trillion last year.” They have unfettered access to personal data on every citizen, including financial records, health histories, and social security numbers.

 

Having administrative-level privileges allows them to copy, delete, or modify critical files, bypass security measures, possibly causing catastrophic changes to financial and data systems, and manipulate millions of secure and confidential files in the Office of Personnel Management on every employee of the U.S. government. 

 

His henchmen cut funding and payments to Health & Human Services, shutting down countless critical research programs (think childhood cancer) and crippling medical facilities that serve the most vulnerable in our society. His technicians are infiltrating and “examining” NOAA, FEMA, the FAA, the CDC, the EPA, the Commerce Department, and countless other agencies in an effort to dismantle the federal government and end “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs.

 

Want to feel safe on a commercial airplane, have a clue about what the weather’s going to do tomorrow, get help when a raging wildfire or an enormous hurricane decimates your home, or have advanced warning when the next pandemic is headed our way? Forgetaboutit, Trump and Musk don’t care. They’re dismissing the experts who know how to help.

 

The DOGE teams shuttered USAID – the U.S. Agency for International Development is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance - food and medicine, disaster and poverty relief for impoverished nations all over the world on less than 1% of the U.S. annual budget. Those humanitarian missions feed the hungry, cure the sick, rescue the desperate, and reinforce economic cooperation and political relationships that support our international interests. USAID contracts with American farmers who supply grains and basic foods are now null and void.

 

The official ASAID website has been scrubbed with the exception of a message dismissing all personnel, foreign and domestic, and terminating all but essential operations worldwide.

 

Wonder why Musk zeroed in on USAID for his first “investigation”? Newsweek reports, 

 

“This raises a potential conflict of interest, as Musk's companies (Space X and Starlink) were under investigation by USAID shortly before he began calling for the shutdown. Starlink's activity in Eastern Europe has been criticized, with many Russian operatives claiming to have access to Starlink despite Musk's assurances that Ukraine has exclusive access to the service.

 

Additionally, last September, Ukrainian forces downed a Russian drone that had a Starlink terminal integrated with its systems, raising questions as to how secure Starlink's operations during the Ukraine war are.”

 

In an obvious conflict of interest, Musk has made no secret of his personal and business relationships with his buddy Vlad Putin and Chinese dictator Ji Zinping, a partner in giant Telsa manufacturing facilities, as well as enormous markets for Musk's products and services. Wonder whether one of those products will include reams of information gleaned from American’s most secure databases by his hackers?

 

Next up is fulfilling Trump’s promise to abolish the Department of Education, which serves 49.6 million public school students and provides grants, scholarships, and aid for more than 12 million college students.

 

Project 2025 outlined the execution of Republican policy to return the responsibility for education to the states, which, according to Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association,

 

“would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections," she said. "Americans did not vote for, and do not support, ending the federal government’s commitment to ensuring equal educational opportunities for every child."

 

In a July campaign email, Trump laid out his other priorities for American education, which included cutting federal funding for any schools or programs pushing “critical race theory,” opening civil rights investigations into schools discriminating against Asian Americans, implementing a credentialing system to certify teachers who “embrace patriotic values” and “find[ing] and remov[ing] radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education.”

 

As we have seen in Florida and Texas, civics curriculum on the structure and function of the different branches of our government has been curtailed or eliminated. History instruction has been rewritten to substitute claims that the Civil War was fought for “states’ rights” and that the slaves benefitted from their servitude. The Holocaust is ignored, as are white settlers driving Native Americans off their land and marching them a thousand miles to a desolate wilderness on the Trail of Tears, or the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Historical facts that might diminish or denigrate the “glory” of white men in our history have been eliminated and replaced with fiction.

 

Many red states are instituting “Voucher programs” that offer a flat subsidy for each student, drawing funds from public school budgets to supplement private schools (which have been increasing their tuition fees to match those voucher funds to exclude minority students), homeschooling, and independent “religious” charter schools, which are not accountable to state boards of education.

 

Arizona’s voucher program “is one the largest voucher programs in the nation and one of the most unaccountable. Far from serving lower income families, Arizona’s vouchers benefit predominantly private school families, siphon valuable funds from public schools, and have destabilized the state’s budget.”  

 

Trump intends to manipulate public education to brainwash the next generation to accept totalitarianism as normal and acceptable by tailoring the lessons to support white supremacy, radical Christianity, extreme nationalism, and acceptance of the will of the “supreme leader.” He has publicly questioned whether he can serve a third term.

 

We are witnessing the initial steps of instituting a dictatorship through the subjugation of the legislature, with the Republican Congress offering absolute allegiance to Trump’s policies and ignoring their sworn oath to maintain the checks and balances prescribed in the Constitution. 

 

Mitch McConnell fulfilled the second step during Trump’s first administration by packing the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court with loyal extremists willing to uphold Trump’s immoral and illegal policies. The president has already indicated that he expects the military to enforce his edicts and suppress resistance and protest demonstrations by the American people, which is against the law and every soldier’s duty to uphold and protect the Constitution.

 

The Republican legislature is unwilling to stand up to the blatant assault and evisceration of their powers and, while the judiciary has blocked some of Trump/Musk/DOGE’s meddling in the management and systems of many government agencies temporarily, they have no means to enforce those decisions, should Trump simply ignore the courts.

 

While Congressional Democrats are trying to slow the onslaught, the madness will continue, as tens of thousands of civil servants who are experts in their fields will be dismissed gutting vital agencies, benefits and services will disappear, inflation and unemployment are beginning to spike, and the wealthy oligarchs who scripted and paid for dismantling the government are reaping the bounty of riches and power.

 

The only way to stop the rapid destruction of our democracy and our way of life is a massive, relentless, and unyielding display of anger by the American people. While sporadic protests are spreading across the country, we need a coordinated national response if there is any hope of salvaging the ideals that make this country our home and the envy of the world before our twin presidents ravage our democracy.

 

Stand up! Speak out! Make a difference!

 

Thanks for your support. Share this with our friends and visit www.rickstiller.com for more essays and an introduction to my novels.

​

Give your brain a rest and your eyes a treat with my floral portraits at www.rickstillerart.com

​

​