Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / Corruption, Nationalism and the Dismantling of Institutions

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Corruption, Nationalism and the Dismantling of Institutions · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So all eyes were on more Epstein revelations
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: and the Supreme Court ruling on tariffs last week.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: But so much else has happened that you should know about.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a bit of a longer video.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this week the Trump administration has targeted
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: the environment, universities,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: health, other countries and really leaned
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: into its increasingly white nationalist agenda.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: But let's start with corruption.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Trump as king.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Trump rewards those loyal to him.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: So last week he nominated a lawyer who was part of his legal team
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: to serve as a judge on the eighth U.S.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Circuit Court of Appeals in Missouri.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that lawyer Justin Smith represented Trump in his case
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: to the Supreme Court and presidential immunity
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: and also in Trump's case against writer E Jean Carroll,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: where a jury found that
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then this kind of Trump, the would be king.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So over the last year, like Trump's efforts
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: to promote himself as kind of the dominant American have kind of
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: become so commonplace that we don't we're kind of glossing over them.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he regularly depicts himself in a heroic, almost godly
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: fashion, often using kind of AI generated imagery.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's depicted himself as a king,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: as a super man, as a Jedi knight, as a military hero,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: and even as a pope and a white Catholic.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's basically been building this kind of cult of personality,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: the likes of which is really quite unprecedented in American history,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of in that vein,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: a large banner featuring Donald Trump's face was hung
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: on the exterior of the Justice Department
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: headquarters last week, and kind of a physical display
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  SPEAKER_00: of Trump's efforts to exert power over law enforcement in the US.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also had the Trump Organization seeking exclusive rights
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: to use Trump's name on airports and dozens of related
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: things like busses to umbrellas, to travel bags and so on.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: say the trademark lawyer who uncovered those filings,
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Josh Gerben, called them completely unprecedented.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then two days later, the white House communications
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: director, Steve Chung,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: praised the approval to rename Palm Beach International Airport
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: after Trump,
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  SPEAKER_00: basically saying on social media that the president, Donald J.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Trump International Airport has a great ring to it.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So unfortunately, there's kind of a lot to say on nationalism.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So leaning into kind of white supremacism.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Trump's nominee for a senior State Department role,
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  SPEAKER_00: this guy called Jeremy Carl told the Senate Foreign Relations
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Committee in a kind of confirmation hearing
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: that a lot of dominant white culture is weakening America.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then following a flood of
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: donations from hard right donors in December, including Peter Thiel,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump then endorsed Texas congressional candidate
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jace Yarbrough on Truth Social.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Yarbrough has recently articulated
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: as part of his campaign in Texas
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  SPEAKER_00: a series of pretty extremist positions,
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  SPEAKER_00: including saying that immigrants don't
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: share the same values as Americans.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: He called for a return to race based immigration quotas and said that
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Islam is fundamentally incompatible with American citizenship.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then the administration is making it harder
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: for immigrants here legally, and those seeking legal status.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So firstly, they announced a proposal to prevent undocumented immigrants
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  SPEAKER_00: from receiving federal housing assistance.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that may seem innocuous, but it's a policy that could displace
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: tens of thousands of legal residents and citizens, many of them children
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: who live with unauthorized relatives in public housing.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Department of Homeland Security also proposed a new rule,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: which will really make it much harder for asylum seekers to work.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, they said they're going to pause work permits
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: for asylum applicants until the average processing times.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: For those applications is less than half a year.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: But based on current wait times, that in itself
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: could take over 100 years to get to that level.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: They've also given immigration officers much broader powers
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  SPEAKER_00: to detain legal refugees waiting a green card, basically
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: saying they have to be re vetted.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they've gone through this,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: this kind of very rigorous process to kind of become refugees.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then now they're applying for their green card.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're having to go through that process again.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then in January, all eyes were kind of
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: on immigration actions in Minnesota.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the month, the Trump administration said
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: it was going to draw down federal immigration, agents in Minnesota.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, it kind of now seems, according to attorneys and advocates,
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  SPEAKER_00: that what they're actually doing is kind of,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: trying to divert people's attention.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they've moved out into the suburbs
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  SPEAKER_00: and other towns, and they're kind of using laws to get
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  SPEAKER_00: people to come out of their homes.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, in one instance, they used two agents who pretended
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: that their car had broken down outside, an immigrant’s house
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  SPEAKER_00: who was a mechanic, he came out to help.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then agents swarmed and arrested him.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, what people are saying is that they've kind of used
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: that draw down messaging to actually lower people's guards
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the arrests are continuing
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  SPEAKER_00: just as they were before, with little oversight or transparency
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: for those who are already in Ice detention.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Things continue to be really grim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Last week, a detainee died,
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  SPEAKER_00: in Indiana with the cause of death under investigation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Making that at least
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  SPEAKER_00: the seventh death just this year in federal immigration, custody.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Trump administration flew nine people,
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  SPEAKER_00: to Cameroon in a kind of secret deportation operation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Almost all of those nine people had been granted protections
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  SPEAKER_00: from the US courts against being sent back to their home countries.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, none of them were from Cameroon,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the US has not made any public deal with Cameroon
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: to accept deportees who are from other nations.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all kind of quite murky and kind of going against the spirit
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: of the rulings.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the judiciary in the US are like increasingly calling
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: attention to violations of the law by the immigration agency.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So hundreds of judges around the US have ruled
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: over 4000 times since October
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  SPEAKER_00: that Trump's administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, the administration is continuing
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: to jail people indefinitely,
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  SPEAKER_00: even after the courts ruled that that was illegal.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then kind of just to cap it off, at an immigration ruling in
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  SPEAKER_00: West Virginia last week, the judge wrote the following.
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  SPEAKER_00: They said across the interior of the United States, agents of the
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  SPEAKER_00: federal government masked anonymous, armed with military weapons,
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  SPEAKER_00: operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind
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  SPEAKER_00: are seizing persons for civil and immigration violations,
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  SPEAKER_00: and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is an assault on the constitutional order.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then moving kind of away simply from thinking about immigrants.
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  SPEAKER_00: In recent months, the government has also relentlessly
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  SPEAKER_00: prosecuted protesters, government critics
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  SPEAKER_00: and other people kind of arrested during immigration operations.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they often accused them of physically attacking officers
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  SPEAKER_00: or interfering with with the duties of those officers.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But many of those cases have recently been dismissed or ended
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  SPEAKER_00: in not guilty verdicts, often because the official count of events
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: are untrue, they're proven to be untrue.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And criminal defense lawyers have said that
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: it was really unusual for federal prosecutors to pursue
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  SPEAKER_00: such a high volume of charges over
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: pretty minor clashes with law enforcement
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  SPEAKER_00: and it's really extraordinary to see them also lose
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  SPEAKER_00: so many of those cases.
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  SPEAKER_00: So so the assumption is that actually what's going on is an attempt
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  SPEAKER_00: to try and prevent other people from protesting and trying
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  SPEAKER_00: to having their lives upended by having to go through a legal process.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if America is aggressively pursuing immigrants at home,
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  SPEAKER_00: it is also being aggressive against other countries abroad.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So firstly, and it really isn't being reported as much now.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: The US is continuing its military
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: strikes on boats in international waters.
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  SPEAKER_00: In just the last week.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It has destroyed five boats and killed at least 17 people.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: The US also boarded a Venezuelan oil tanker in the Indian Ocean
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: and linked to Trump's activities in central and south America.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: The US blockade of Cuba, which is the first of its kind in over 60 years,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: is getting closer to kind of achieving
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: the US goal of regime change in Cuba, with the country close
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: to collapse and suffering humanitarian disaster.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And alongside the blockade, Trump's threats of tariffs against
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: any country assisting Cuba is working to further isolate the country.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, across the ocean, it looks increasingly
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: as if Trump is about to attack Iran.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: The BBC has confirmed the location of the US aircraft carrier,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: the USS Abraham Lincoln, near Iran using satellite imagery.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Abraham Lincoln leads a strike group with three guided
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: missile destroyers.
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  SPEAKER_00: It carries 90 aircraft, including F-35 fighters and almost 6000 crew.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then Trump last week warned Iran that it had a maximum of 15 days
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: to reach a deal with the US or bad things will happen.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the next day,
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump said that he was considering
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: a limited strike against Iran if it doesn't forge a deal.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the day after that, Steve Witkoff who is the Middle East
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: envoy, said Trump was curious as to why Iran had not yet capitulated,
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  SPEAKER_00: while also saying that Iran was a week away
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: from industrial bomb making material.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So this is all kind of ramping up fears
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: of an imminent major strike against Iran.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then in Munich,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: at the Global Security Conference, the Danish prime minister warned
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: that Trump was still very serious about taking over Greenland.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I suspect that issue is going to come up again
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: at some point over the next few months.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, this was also the week where Trump's,
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: International Board of Peace had its first meeting in Washington.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those who didn't come, received kind of an ominous warning
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: where basically Trump said, you can't play cute with me.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: The, president then suggested that
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: his new board could overtake the United Nations.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And while Gaza is supposed to be the board's primary priority
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: and its main purpose,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't discussed by Trump until 25 minutes into his welcome speech
• 9:56
  and basically
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: spent most of that speech
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  SPEAKER_00: complimenting the world leaders who were there,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: rating them on their good looks,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: talking about how rich they were and how strong they were.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: So moving on and thinking about universities.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the Trump administration sued Harvard, accusing it of failing
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: to comply with the federal investigation
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: and seeking documents that determine whether the university
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: had illegally considered race in its admissions process.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that comes less than two weeks after Trump said
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: that his administration was seeking $1 billion from Harvard
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: to settle the federal probes into it.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And, that kind of intimidation is having an effect.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: that was reported the Harvard administrators
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: had pushed a faculty committee to cancel
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: a long running biannual symposium featuring tenure track women's
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: research, basically saying they don't want to get on the wrong side
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: of any laws around hosting a single gender event.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Pentagon said that it might well stop tuition
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: aid for top universities, where Defense Secretary Hegseth
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: considers those schools to be biased against the U.S.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: military and sponsoring
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: troublesome partnerships with foreign adversaries.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that follows on from Hegseth already targeting Harvard University
• 11:09
  in that way.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: A few weeks ago.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So now thinking about health.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So staff members at the United States, premier
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: infectious disease research Institute have been instructed
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: to remove the words
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: biodefense and pandemic preparedness from the institute's web pages.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: called NIAID, is expected to deprioritize
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: these two topics in an overhaul of its funded research projects.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this is directly going to weaken
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: the US’s ability to respond to new pandemic threats,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: pretending it's not going to happen, and removing words
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: from a website isn't going to stop a pandemic from happening.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes you much less ready when it does happen.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that was reported on the same day that US Health Secretary
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: RFK junior downplayed Covid risks by saying, I'm not scared of a germ.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.
• 12:05
  I mean,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: the levels of seriousness of
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: this administration, it just it’s something else.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, a few days later,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: or NIH, was then also named to be the acting director of the CDC.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the US centers for Disease Control,
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: and that makes him the fourth leader of the CDC in a single year.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also quite unprecedented because it just further consolidates
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: power among a really small group of men at the helm of U.S.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: health agencies.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So Bhattacharya made a name for himself
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: proposing measures to prevent Covid 19.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he had previously strongly criticized officials
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: who fund research and advise on policy at the same time.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that is literally exactly what he's going to be doing now.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And scientific experts are just concerned that Bhattacharya,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: who is a close ally of Kennedy, will also be advancing
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: new restrictions on vaccination in his new role in the CDC.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And finally,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of a demonstration
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: of the further hollowing out of federal scientific agencies.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: The chief of the National Institute of Arthritis and Muscular,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: skeletal and Skin Diseases, Lindsay Criswell, told her staff last week
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: that her five year leadership appointment hadn't been renewed.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so that now means that 16 out of the 27 NIH institutes
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: will be operating without a permanent director.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, on the environment.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So at the moment, the Department of Homeland Security
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: is shut down because Congress can't agree on its funding
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: in the wake of the various controversies around ICE this year.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the department has really largely continue to operate
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: because most of its functions are considered essential.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: However, apparently FEMA is not considered essential.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and its mission
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: is to help people before, during, and after natural disasters
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So FEMA brings in emergency personnel, supplies
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: and equipment to stricken areas.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: But last week, the Trump administration ordered FEMA
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: to suspend deployments of hundreds of aid workers
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: to disaster affected areas around the country.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then also last week, incentives to promote more environmentally
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: friendly cars, basically ending the Environmental Protection Agency,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: the EPA has announced that car manufacturers will no longer earn
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: credit for installing engines
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: that automatically turn off when vehicles stop.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And restart when drivers, move again.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, this kind of start stop
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: feature is meant to both save fuel and reduce emissions.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the Trump administration has now formally rejected
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: the science behind it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: which means that they are allowed
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: to eliminate the credit, which they have done.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: More generally, the administration is continuing its purge of regulation.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it announced last week that it's going to roll back air
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: regulations limiting toxic mercury,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: mercury particles in the air from power plants.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So a move the administration says will boost energy.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But that public health groups
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: say will harm public health for the most vulnerable groups in the US.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then for what regulations remain, the enforcement
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: has basically ground to a halt.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's basically reported that that even if major polluters are breaking
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: environmental laws, the Trump administration is not enforcing them.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not prosecuting them.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can basically just get away with it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of everything I wanted to go through this week.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back next week.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then all these actions and more on Trump action tracker.info.