Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / Two weeks in Trump's America: elections, environment, health and corruption

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Two weeks in Trump's America: elections, environment, health and corruption · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Loads has happened in the last two weeks.
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  SPEAKER_00: But today I want to cover four topics in particular
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  SPEAKER_00: which are elections, the environment, health and corruption.
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  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with elections, where the Republicans are trying
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  SPEAKER_00: to help their chances in the midterms.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Trump has a long standing voting bill called the Save America Act,
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  SPEAKER_00: which would require voters to show original citizenship
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  SPEAKER_00: documents like a passport or a birth certificate in person
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  SPEAKER_00: every time they register or update their registration to vote.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, research
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  SPEAKER_00: from the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 21 million Americans,
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  SPEAKER_00: legal voters, do not have ready access to those documents.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Save Act has already failed in the Senate.
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  SPEAKER_00: It got 50 votes, which is much less than the 60 votes
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  SPEAKER_00: needed to overcome a filibuster.
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  SPEAKER_00: So instead, Trump has been trying to
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  SPEAKER_00: force it through by attaching it to things that have nothing to do with voting.
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  SPEAKER_00: First, he said he wouldn't sign a renewal of FISA
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  SPEAKER_00: which is a foreign surveillance law, unless the Save Act was attached to it.
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  SPEAKER_00: FISA actually lapsed as a result, which is the first time
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  SPEAKER_00: that's happened in almost 20 years.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then last week, Trump canceled the signing of a separate bill,
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  SPEAKER_00: the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, which is a bipartisan
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  SPEAKER_00: housing affordability bill that passed the House, 358 to 32.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, Trump said he wouldn't sign it until the Save Act passes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, because that housing bill had passed by such large margins,
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  SPEAKER_00: it will actually become
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  SPEAKER_00: law automatically after ten days, so Trump doesn't need to sign it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And his refusal was more performative.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it still tells you a lot about what matters to him
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  SPEAKER_00: and what he's prepared to sacrifice to get the Save Act passed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Second is Mail-In voting.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Trump posted on Truth Social this week that we should stop Utah
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  SPEAKER_00: from moving to all mail ballots, warning that it would help Democrats.
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  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't, particularly.
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  SPEAKER_00: This took Utah's own
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  SPEAKER_00: Republican lieutenant governor, who runs the state elections, by surprise.
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  SPEAKER_00: She pointed out that over 90% of Utah voters of both parties already vote by
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  SPEAKER_00: mail.
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  SPEAKER_00: And she also said Trump's voted by mail and the system works.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, Trump has been obsessed with stopping mail in voting for years
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  SPEAKER_00: and seems determined to make it harder to vote.
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  SPEAKER_00: Regardless, the administration is already trying to stop people mail-in
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  SPEAKER_00: voting with the support of the US Postal Service.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Postmaster General David Steiner told the Senate last week
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  SPEAKER_00: that under a proposed
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  SPEAKER_00: new rule, the Postal Service just won't deliver mail ballots to states
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  SPEAKER_00: that refused to hand over their voter data to the federal government.
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  SPEAKER_00: So all 47 Democratic senators have written to the Postal Service,
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  SPEAKER_00: calling this an illegal attempt to turn the Postal Service
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  SPEAKER_00: into an arm of the White House.
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  SPEAKER_00: Third is a kind of, actions around manufacturing fraud where there isn't any.
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  SPEAKER_00: So after California's primary elections, vote counting took quite a long time,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is completely normal under California's mail ballot rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, Trump claimed, without any evidence
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  SPEAKER_00: that Democrats were trying to steal the election.
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  SPEAKER_00: A Trump appointed federal prosecutor
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  SPEAKER_00: in Los Angeles then opened multiple election fraud investigations.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, Republican candidate
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  SPEAKER_00: Steve Hilton initially appeared to be losing the governor's race.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump said at the time that the election was being stolen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then Hilton ended up advancing to the general election
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  SPEAKER_00: after all, and Trump's response wasn't to say he was wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: He said the only reason that Hilton had passed through is because
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump had pressured the prosecutor.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in Trump's telling, if the Republican loses,
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  SPEAKER_00: the election was rigged, the Republican wins,
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  SPEAKER_00: that's also proof the election was rigged because Trump's own interventions
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  SPEAKER_00: supposedly forced the result.
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  SPEAKER_00: So either way, he's convinced elections are rigged.
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  SPEAKER_00: And finally, Trump is kind of testing his message for the November midterms.
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  SPEAKER_00: So after progressive Democratic socialist candidate won big primaries in New York
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  SPEAKER_00: last week, Trump called the Democrats
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  SPEAKER_00: “godless communists” who pose a threat to Christianity
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  SPEAKER_00: and “the greatest threat to our country since its founding 250 years ago.”
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  SPEAKER_00: None of the winning candidates are actually communists, they’re
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  SPEAKER_00: democratic socialists, which is a different thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they're certainly not representative of the Democrat Party in other states.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the rhetoric is kind of the point.
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  SPEAKER_00: What he's trying to do is make the election about painting your opponents
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  SPEAKER_00: as an existential threat and the enemy, rather than about his own record.
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  SPEAKER_00: So next, onto the environment.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Department of the Interior has agreed to pay $765 million to a company called
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  SPEAKER_00: Invenergy to cancel four offshore wind leases of New York, Maine and California.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead,
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  SPEAKER_00: the company will redirect that money into gas plants and geothermal projects.
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  SPEAKER_00: This brings the total the administration has now paid out to cancel offshore
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  SPEAKER_00: wind leases to more than $2.5 billion.
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  SPEAKER_00: One environmental group estimated that the council's projects
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  SPEAKER_00: could have powered more than 3 million homes in the US.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, the Department of the Interior
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  SPEAKER_00: has proposed rolling back two rules that govern drilling on public lands.
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  SPEAKER_00: One rule change will cut the bond the oil and gas companies
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  SPEAKER_00: have to pay before drilling from half $1 million, down to just $25,000.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now that bond exists
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  SPEAKER_00: to make sure that companies, not taxpayers, pay to clean up old wells
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  SPEAKER_00: when they're abandoned.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other rule change
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  SPEAKER_00: would scrap a requirement for companies to plan how they'll limit methane leaks.
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  SPEAKER_00: And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
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  SPEAKER_00: And now moving on to health.
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  SPEAKER_00: RFK junior, the health secretary, fired all the independent experts on the Center
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  SPEAKER_00: for Disease Control’s vaccine advisory committee ACIP
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  SPEAKER_00: last summer, and he replaced them with vaccine skeptics.
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  SPEAKER_00: That new committee then recommended slashing the childhood vaccine schedule.
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  SPEAKER_00: A federal judge ruled in March
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  SPEAKER_00: that the new appointees were “distinctly unqualified” and blocked the changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: But instead of accepting that, RFK has now rewritten the charter,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is essentially the rulebook for who's allowed to sit on that committee.
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  SPEAKER_00: The old rules required real expertise in vaccine research and safety,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the new rules just require “a balanced range of scientific, clinical and public
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  SPEAKER_00: health expertise.” And basically, critics are saying that's so vague
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  SPEAKER_00: that it can qualify almost anyone with any kind of health adjacent title.
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  SPEAKER_00: One expert called it “retrofitting the rules
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  SPEAKER_00: to fit the people.” The administration is separately
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  SPEAKER_00: appealing the original court ruling, blocking the appointments.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then Trump has created a special refugee program for white South Africans,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Afrikaners, based on his unproven claims of persecutions in South Africa.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're pretty much now the only people getting into the US under asylum.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what's that got to do with health?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, this week the US confirmed it’s ending all PEPFAR funding
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  SPEAKER_00: for HIV treatment in South Africa, which is about $400 million a year.
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  SPEAKER_00: And officials have tied that decision in part
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  SPEAKER_00: to the same kind of allegations of discrimination against Afrikaners.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, South Africa has the largest
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  SPEAKER_00: HIV positive population in the world, more than 8 million people
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  SPEAKER_00: and the head of UNAids warned that this kind of cut will cost lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the administration has put new conditions on federal health funding.
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  SPEAKER_00: So programs that get federal money now have to prioritize
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  SPEAKER_00: what's described as parental authority in education
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  SPEAKER_00: and move away from harm reduction approaches to drug overdose prevention.
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  SPEAKER_00: So those kind of approaches
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  SPEAKER_00: include things like fentanyl test strips and safe consumption support,
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  SPEAKER_00: which actually have a really strong evidence base for saving people's lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this kind of move echoes a theme from a couple of weeks ago
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  SPEAKER_00: when I covered the administration dismantling the Housing First approach
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  SPEAKER_00: to homelessness in favor of treatment focus, less funded alternatives.
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  SPEAKER_00: So basically, what the government is doing is it's moving away from really good
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  SPEAKER_00: evidence-based programs in favor of others based purely on ideology.
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  SPEAKER_00: And finally corruption and three different flavors of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The last two weeks has seen corruption in business,
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  SPEAKER_00: pet projects and personal favors.
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  SPEAKER_00: First, business interests.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Justice Department has asked a federal court to dismiss
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  SPEAKER_00: a lawsuit brought by the NAACP against Elon Musk’s company xAI.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the NAACP is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it says that xAI is illegally running dozens of gas turbines
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  SPEAKER_00: without pollution permits near homes, schools and churches
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  SPEAKER_00: in a majority black area outside Memphis, Tennessee.
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  SPEAKER_00: The DOJ says shutting the turbines down would threaten national security.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is why it says the federal court should dismiss the lawsuit.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it's worth noting that Musk is also a key ally of the Trump White House.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the National Park Service gave a $1.7 million
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  SPEAKER_00: no bid contract to
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  SPEAKER_00: clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to a company owned by a long time
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump donor.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this bypassed the usual kind of
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  SPEAKER_00: competitive bidding process for these sorts of contracts.
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  SPEAKER_00: As it happened, the renovation didn't go well.
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  SPEAKER_00: The pool turned bright green
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  SPEAKER_00: within days, and the new blue paint on the floor is already peeling.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in Kazakhstan, Trump's two sons invested in a company
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  SPEAKER_00: that shortly afterwards was awarded access to a major tungsten mining project
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  SPEAKER_00: backed up by up to $1.6 billion in US government financing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick personally helped
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  SPEAKER_00: broker the deal, and Lutnick's sons’ investment firm separately earned
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  SPEAKER_00: fees, helping raise capital for the same group of investors.
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  SPEAKER_00: The New York Times found that one or both families now have financial ties
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  SPEAKER_00: to at least 14 companies working on federal mining deals.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the UN sanctioned Board of Peace, which was set up by Donald Trump earlier
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  SPEAKER_00: this year to reconstruct Gaza, is planning a sweeping
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  SPEAKER_00: grant of legal immunity for itself,
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  SPEAKER_00: according to a draft of the resolution obtained by The Guardian.
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  SPEAKER_00: The draft language would also let the organization obtain public property
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  SPEAKER_00: in Gaza “free of charge.” Second is taking money for personal projects.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the administration has redirected $352 million in federal funds that were meant
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  SPEAKER_00: to be for the Secret Service towards Trump's White House Ballroom project.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is despite Trump repeatedly
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: promising that the ballroom would be paid for entirely by private donations.
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  SPEAKER_00: And third is about helping supporters escape consequences.
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  SPEAKER_00: So a private equity executive called David Gentile was convicted of a $1.6
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  SPEAKER_00: billion fraud scheme that mostly hit ordinary retirement savings.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, Gentile served
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  SPEAKER_00: less than two weeks of a seven year sentence before Trump commuted it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Federal prosecutors then opened an investigation into how
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: that commutation happened and found communications from jail, in
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: which Gentile discussed paying over $2.5 million to people who could help get him
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: released, including a retired priest who was friends with Trump.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump personally called that priest, asked if he'd been paid, and shortly
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  SPEAKER_00: afterwards, the priest was a guest at the White House for Easter lunch.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now that investigation has been shut down by the White House.
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  SPEAKER_00: Separately, Trump
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: has nominated a tax lawyer to be the Inland Revenue Service’s top lawyer,
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  SPEAKER_00: but his nominee just happens to work for the law firm that represents
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Trump's personal holding company.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's it for this week.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of these stories with sources are on TrumpActionTracker.info.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: See you in a week or two.