The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America

Hmmm .... now that Trump's policies affect him he's actually thinking about what they mean?? Hate to tell him this but it's too late.


Jensy Machado, a Hispanic U.S. citizen and former Trump supporter, was stopped and briefly detained by ICE agents in Virginia. Despite showing his ID, he was handcuffed and questioned about his immigration status. Machado, who had voted for Trump, expressed his disillusionment, stating, "I was a Trump supporter. I voted for Trump last election because I thought it was going to be... just going against criminals, not every Hispanic looking... that they will assume that we are all illegals.”

“ I told the officer I could show him my ID, but he instructed me to keep my hands raised and not to move. Afterward, he ordered me to exit the vehicle and proceeded to cuff me.
Then he questioned me about how I entered the country and if I was awaiting a court date or had any legal matters. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, 'Do you believe him?'

The incident led him to question his previous support for Trump, highlighting concerns about racial profiling and aggressive immigration enforcement.

May be an image of 3 people, car, road and text that says 'PENSME PENSKE aamal PARKIN LOADINS ZONE สนตรร IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT U.S. CITIZEN DETAINED BY ICE AGENTS IN MANASSAS f f NBCWashington 4 42° 1心石店 旧'



 
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Peter Singer​

Strndooespucl490m26cf44hg0h617h7g06m10g2504mm7a824hgi15cl611 ·
D. Earl Stephens, retired managing editor of the military's daily newspaper, Stars and Stripes, issues a warning, not only to the average citizen of the U.S. but, I believe, to rank and file military personnel at home and around the world.

He's exhorting them to consider if they will follow the orders of a madman hell bent on destroying the U.S. or follow the U.S. Constitution. I suspect tens of thousands of troops will disobey orders rather than invade Canada (less so with Greenland or Panama, I suspect). Those will be the first shots of the civil war.
---

“It would be helpful if we stopped pretending this terrible chapter in American history won’t close without bloodshed …

It would be helpful if Americans, and our feeble Democratic politicians in particular, stopped implying by their comatose actions that Democracy is some damn American right and has no end date.

America very well might be arriving at hers, because, yes, it really is that bad right now.

Rather than bringing Ping-Pong paddles and groovy, little signs to a fascist hate-fest disguised as a State of the Union speech, it would be helpful if our meek, out-of-touch Democratic politicians at least pretended they understood the perilous moment we are standing in right now.

We are in deep, deep trouble, and now would be a wonderful, necessary time to step in front of your favorite mirror and honestly ask yourself what you are willing to do to fight for our country’s survival.

We are but six-plus weeks into the repulsive, wannabe-king’s second term and the damage he and his party are causing are already at catastrophic levels.

Our air, water, earned benefits, peace, public safety, civil rights, and human rights are all under immediate threat. Worse? This is only the first course of many that will be served by the vindictive, orange madman, and his pathetic party of supplicants.

The insults, the attacks, endless provocations, and thrashing of our Constitution will continue daily. All this carefully planned evil will be aimed at exactly one thing: breaking us.

Everything he is doing is designed to pound us into submission, and he’s having a grand damn doing it.

This was entirely his aim when he and his pet mutt, JD Vance, double-teamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the behest of Boss Putin in the Oval Office on Friday. The idea was to publicly humiliate the man who has done more to defend America’s interests across the globe than any Republican in memory.

Because Zelenskyy has tasted gun powder and breathed the odious smell of death on the battlefield, he wasn't about to be pushed around by some morbidly obese, 78-year-old yacht club bully and his toady, who think swinging a sand wedge to free a golf ball from some bunker is dangerous business.

Zelenskyy punched back and wasn't having it. He told the truth, and didn't back down. The future of his country is on the line right now, and he acted like it.

And therein lies the playbook for dealing with this sadistic bastard — if only the cautious, too-clever Democratic Party and their weak leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, bothered paying attention.

While Rome burns, they dither.

They act as if we have all the time in the world, when time is something that is not guaranteed right now. They seem to somehow have no idea how bad things are about to get, or most certainly will be when elections they seem to be pinning their hopes on roll around next year.

Everything changed on November 5th, but by the looks of it, very little has changed in the Democratic Party.

This country will never be the same, and the sooner we come to grips with that, and start acting accordingly the better.

What would you do if everything you had and everyone you loved was threatened? Would you act like Zelenskyy or Schumer?

One of the big mistakes of Joe Biden’s presidency was this notion that everything was going to be OK, and that his idea of America matched the actual circumstances of America.

If I had a dollar for every time he said this, I’d fold up shop and move to Tahiti:

“We are the United States of America – there's nothing we can't do if we do it together. We just have to remember who we are.”

It was a noble statement and magical thinking that would have worked great pre-2016, when we could still believe without being laughed at that our two parties could work together in a crisis to protect America.

When we were attacked by the terrible human being who is now somehow leading us January 6, 2021, that magical thinking needed to go out the nearest window.

Instead, our Justice Department twiddled its thumbs and allowed the America-attacker to build himself back up, so that WE would have to deal with him AGAIN.

I seethe just thinking about this, but it is where we are right now, and the sooner we all understand this the better.

The clock is ticking. The bomb is in place.

Which brings me back around to my original premise: At some point, he will do something so heinous … so anti-America … so dangerous … that the people who truly love our country will be forced into the streets to take a life-or-death stand. Sadly, this is actually the best-case scenario, because the worst case is we just go quietly into the dark, gloomy night and become an authoritarian country, where we have zero rights or say in how we are governed.

Yesterday under the cover of his blankets, the America-attacker shared this with us:

Now read the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES."

He is telling us what he thinks of America and silly things like the Constitution. Kings don’t pay attention to that kind worthless drivel.

And, really, end of the day, it not him who we have most to fear. It’s the stupid, goddam Republicans who are stubbornly in all of our lives. These are the people who have illustrated there is no known pain or sacrifice to our civil liberties or pocketbooks that they won’t absorb just for the satisfaction of watching some poor kid of color going without something they didn’t think she should have.

So the choice is yours: You can continue thinking there is some magical way out of this, or you can begin to take the threat to everything you hold dear seriously, and ACT accordingly.”

— D. Earl Stephens, author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes.
 
In other words, the president is not going to tolerate free speech.


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Student, citizens and legal migrants, are being threatened and deported for voicing political opinions. This is the definition of violating free speech rights. The constitution is being shit on, to exuberant applause.
 
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Retaliating, in an idiotic trade war? Sensible.
Threatening to commence on April Fool's Day? Sensible?
 

Heather Cox Richardson​

toenrSopsdu05f1muf924u2hia9f00c1hhgm0migi0957hl3maf25h52ctt2 ·

March 12, 2025 (Wednesday)

Trump’s 25% tariffs on all aluminum and steel imported into the U.S. went into effect today, prompting retaliatory tariffs from the European Union and Canada. The E.U. announced tariffs on about $28 billion worth of products, including beef and whiskey, mostly produced by Republican-dominated states. “We deeply regret this measure,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers. These tariffs are disrupting supply chains. They bring uncertainty for the economy.”

Canada also announced new tariffs on Wednesday on about $21 billion worth of U.S. products, in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs. François-Philippe Champagne, Canada's minister of innovation, science, and industry, said: “The U.S. administration is once again inserting disruption and disorder into an incredibly successful trading partnership and raising the costs of everyday goods for Canadians and American households alike.”

With the stock market falling and business leaders begging Trump to stop the trade machinations that are creating the volatility that is wrenching the economy downward, Trump said yesterday to reporters: “[L]ong-term, what I’m doing is making our country strong again.”
In an interview on the CBS Evening News last night, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a billionaire financial executive, was asked whether Trump’s economic policies were “worth it” even if they cause a recession.

“These policies are the most important thing America has ever had,” Lutnick answered. “It is worth it.”

Former representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) reposted Lutnick’s assertion and said: “In my graduate thesis, I quoted a hardline communist official from Poland in the 1950s who was asked about terrible shortages of food and housing. He said people had to sacrifice and “if that’s what it takes to prove the superiority of socialism, it’s worth it.”
The days when the Republican Party were conservatives are long gone. Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish politician and political thinker who began the process of articulating a conservative political philosophy, did so most famously in response to the French Revolution. In 1790, a year after the storming of the Bastille prison symbolized the rebellion of the people against the monarchy, Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Burke had supported the American Revolution that had ended less than a decade before largely because he believed that the American colonists were trying to restore their traditional rights. But the French Revolution, he thought, was an entirely different proposition. As revolutionaries in France replaced their country’s traditions with laws and systems based on their theory of an ideal government, Burke drew back.

He took a stand against radical change driven by people trying to make the government enforce a specific political ideology. Ideologically driven government was radical and dangerous, he thought: quickly, the ideology became more important than the complex reality of the way society—and people—actually worked.
In 1790, Burke argued that the role of government was not to impose a worldview, but rather to promote stability, and that lawmakers could achieve that stability most effectively by supporting the structures that had proven themselves effective in the past; in his time, that meant social hierarchies, the church, property, and the family. “Conservative” meant, literally, conserving what was already there, without reference to an ideology. Those in charge of government should make changes slowly, according to facts on the ground, in order to keep the country stable, he thought. If it behaved this way, the government, which in his time was usually seen as a negative force in society, could be a positive one.

In 2025 the Republicans in charge of the United States of America are not the conservatives they call themselves; they are the dangerous ideological radicals Burke feared. They are abruptly dismantling a government that has kept the United States relatively prosperous, secure, and healthy for the past 80 years. In its place, they are trying to impose a government based in the idea that a few men should rule.

CONTINUED

 
Part II

The Trump administration’s hits to the economy have monopolized the news this week, but its swing away from Europe and toward Russia, antagonizing allies and partners while fawning over authoritarians like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, is also a radical stand, and one that seems likely to destabilize American security. Former allies have expressed concern over sharing intelligence with the U.S. in the future, and yesterday, 34 army leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, Japan, and Australia met in Paris without inviting the United States.

The wholesale destruction of the U.S.A.’s advanced medical research, especially cancer research, by firing scientists, canceling grants, banning communications and collaboration, and stopping travel is also radical and seems unlikely to leave Americans healthier than before.

Yesterday, news broke that the administration canceled $800 million worth of grants to Johns Hopkins University, one of the nation’s top research universities in science and medicine. Meanwhile, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cast doubt on the safe, effective measles vaccine as the disease continues to spread across the Southwest.

Today, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin boasted that the administration is taking 31 actions to roll back environmental protections. Those include regulations about electric vehicles and pollution from coal-fired plants. The administration intends to rescind the EPA’s 2009 finding that the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change endanger public health. That finding is the legal argument for regulations governing car and truck emissions and power plants.

Also today, the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees supplemental food programs, announced it was cutting about $1 billion in funding that enables schools and food banks to buy directly from local farms and ranches. This will hit farmers and producers as well as children and food-insecure families.

In place of the system that has created relative stability for almost a century, Republicans under President Donald Trump and his sidekick billionaire Elon Musk are imposing a government that is based in the idea that a government that works to make people safe, prosperous, and healthy is simply ripping off wealthy people. Asked if he felt sorry for those losing their jobs in the government purges, Trump told NBC News, without evidence: “Sure I do. I feel very badly...but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”

The administration promises that it is eliminating “waste, fraud, and corruption,” but Judd Legum of Popular Information today launched the “Musk Watch DOGE Tracker,” which shows that Musk has overstated the savings he claims by at least 92%, with the warning that since these identified cuts are illegal and unconstitutional—Congress appropriates money and writes the laws for how it’s spent, and courts have agreed that the executive branch has to execute the laws as they are written—the contracts might not be canceled at all.

That the administration knows it is not operating on the up-and-up seems clear from its attempts to hide what it is doing. It has taken weeks for courts to get the administration to say who is running the “Department of Government Efficiency” and what the body actually is. The White House has tried to characterize Musk as a senior advisor to the president to shield him from questioning.

But today, in response to a lawsuit by 14 attorneys general from Democratic-dominated states arguing that Musk is acting unconstitutionally, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Musk and DOGE to turn over their records and answer questions, giving them three weeks to comply.

On Tuesday, remaining staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) received an email under the name of acting executive secretary Erica Carr at USAID telling them to shred or burn agency records, despite strict laws about the preservation of federal documents. “Haphazardly shredding and burning USAID documents and personnel files seems like a great way to get rid of evidence of wrongdoing when you’re illegally dismantling the agency,” said Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two lawsuits are already challenging the order.

And the corruption in the administration was out in the open yesterday. After Trump advertised Elon Musk’s cars at the White House, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that Musk “has signaled to President Trump’s advisers in recent days that he wants to put $100 million into groups controlled by the Trump political operation.” This is separate from Musk’s own political action committee, which dropped almost $300 million into the 2024 election and which is now pouring money into next month’s election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The government that Trump and Musk are destroying, with the complicity of their party, is popular, and Republican members of Congress are apparently unwilling to have to vote on the policies that are putting their radical ideology into place. In an extraordinary move yesterday, House Republicans made it impossible for Congress to challenge Trump’s tariffs.

The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced—as Democrats have recently done—it has to be taken up in a matter of days.

But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration.
The Republicans’ legislation that a day is not a day seems to prove the truth of Burke’s observation that by trying to force reality to fit their ideology, radical ideologues will end up imposing tyranny in the name of liberty.
 
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DON'T LOOK AWAY. The U.S. is shutting down civil rights offices, punishing law firms, gutting climate rules, and forcing Canadians to register like it’s 1925. The last Guantánamo detainees? Shipped to Louisiana. Trump just pardoned a convicted lawmaker 15 days into his sentence.

The fight isn’t just in DC. Local organizing is exploding. A NY Indivisible chapter saw 3x its expected turnout this week—a glimpse of the power fueling resistance. Read about that and more in Micah Sifry’s The Defiance This Time.

Amplify this. Share with friends, family, and anyone ready to fight back. The more who know, the stronger we are.

#Resistance2025 #StayInformed #GovBriefToday

LINKS

1. https://www.propublica.org/article/...vil-rights-division-eroded-by-massive-layoffs

2. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/g-s1-53422/judge-blocks-trump-law-firm

3. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/nat...te-down-education-department-layoffs/3696259/

4. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/liv...defends-tariff?id=119625202&entryId=119721718

5. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/epa-rollback-environmental-regulations-zeldin-rcna196112

6. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn892j6wpg8o

7. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/arts/national-endowment-humanities-trump-shelly-lowe.html

8. https://apnews.com/article/trump-eu-tariffs-countermeasures-806a3b9bcc9cd4e45817e672d95f0070

9. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-clears-out-remaining-migrants-from-guantanamo-bay/8008349.html

10. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/12/nyc-migrant-shelter-doj

11. https://www.ketk.com/news/national/...nts-detainment-over-pro-palestinian-protests/

12. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/12/trump-pardon-tennessee-brian-kelsey-prison-campaign-doj.html

13. https://thehill.com/homenews/519209...y-fired-head-of-federal-employee-labor-board/

14. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...e-military-trump-transgender-ban/82278402007/

15. https://www.axios.com/2025/03/12/trump-canada-visitors-immigration-authorities

FIGHTING BACK - https://substack.com/home/post/p-158882604

ARCHIVE & FREE SUBSCRIPTION - https://govbrief.today
 
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Authoritarian overreach is accelerating. The Oklahoma GOP just slipped election denial into school standards. Arlington National Cemetery erased Black, Hispanic, and female service members from its history. The Education Dept is investigating 50+ universities for supposed "anti-white" bias.

Meanwhile, Trump is dismantling federal agencies, blocking the FBI HQ move for petty political reasons, and openly calling for his enemies to be jailed.

The backlash is growing. Constituents are fighting back—booing GOP lawmakers out of town halls, forcing courts to intervene, and keeping pressure on. Every headline today points to a stark reality: this fight is happening at every level, from classrooms to Congress.

This moment demands action. Read, share, and organize. The more who know, the stronger we are. #GovBriefToday #Resist2025

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/tr...ation-enforce-ban-dei-programs-now-rcna196551

2. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmj8ky3rvno

3. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5195480-riley-moore-chinese-students-visas-bill/

4. https://apnews.com/article/greenland-election-politics-trump-03635aac237fc6955a820ae2de07143a

5. https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/worl...in-rare-justice-department-speech/ar-AA1AXj38

6. https://www.scrippsnews.com/politic...on-allowing-migrants-to-be-held-at-guantanamo

7. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/14/g-s1-53831/dei-universities-education-department-investigation

8. https://www.thedailynewsonline.com/...cle_dcb6a9c4-0151-11f0-b4a2-eb1cafbbab92.html

9. https://www.wbaltv.com/article/trump-oppose-moving-fbi-headquarters-greenbelt/64191672

10. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...y-orchestra-concert-washington-kennedy-center

11. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/us/politics/trump-order-voice-of-america.html

12. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/columbia-gaza-leqaa-kordia-arrest.html

13. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/new...into-ok-social-studies-standards/82378280007/

14. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/14/america-is-not-canada-pm-carney-says-in-rebuke-to-trump.html

15. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nor...-boos-congressman-escorted/story?id=119789772
 

Brace yourselves: whatever crazy, awful things Trump may have done to date, it’s only going to get worse​

Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been. That bit of trite wisdom, attributed to Wayne Gretzky, might usefully be applied in assessing the risks posed by Mr. Gretzky’s political idol, Donald Trump.

Every time we think we have taken the measure of Mr. Trump, every time we think we have understood the depths of his depravity, the absoluteness of his nullity, the scale of the threat he represents – to American democracy, to Canada, to the peace of the world – he defeats us. He does or says something far worse than we had ever thought possible, even of him.

We need to learn from this, fast. Because Mr. Trump is metastasizing, mutating, rapidly worsening. He is on a kind of exponential spiral, his behaviour approaching ....

www.theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: Brace yourselves: whatever crazy, awful things Trump may have done to date, it’s only going to get worse

The world has never before been faced with such a threat. The United States has handed the nuclear codes to a madman, a criminal, a would-be dictator and a moron
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com
 
Shiftless2 said:
We need to learn from this, fast. Because Mr. Trump is metastasizing, mutating, rapidly worsening. He is on a kind of exponential spiral, his behaviour approaching ....
Click to expand...
... approaching
the speed of dark?

I think it was Gretzky, watched an entire hockey game drawing the location of the puck on paper real-time.
Gretzky reasoned, the locations on his drawing where the lines crossed the most were the locations a player should be to intercept the puck.

note: it seems we get two St. Pat's Days this year, one today, another Monday. Happy St. Patrick's Day
 
Shiftless2 said:
She'll be snapped up but the US will find it difficult, if not impossible, to replace her #316
Click to expand...
What is the correct explanation for that / these?
- Spectacular incompetence?
- Ruthless national sabotage?

There are other explanations. Any more plausible than blaming it on the Martians?
 
"... to be honest with you Canada only works as a state.
We don't need anything they have." Trump, from the oval office

The following is what Trump's government reports of it:

Canada Trade Summary​

U.S. total goods trade with Canada were an estimated $762.1 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Canada in 2024 were $349.4 billion ...

Canada

U.S.-Canada Trade Facts U.S. goods and private services trade with Canada totaled $707 billion in 2012 (latest data available). Exports totaled $354 billion; Imports totaled $354 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade surplus with Canada was $40 million in 2012.
ustr.gov ustr.gov

"... to be honest with you Canada only works as a state. We don't need anything they have." Trump, from the oval office
Click to expand...
Alright.
If we don't need it, why have we imported hundreds of $Billions of $Dollars worth of it year after year? Donald, did a member of the white house staff put salt in your sugar bowl again? To make your breakfast Cheerie O's a little less cheery?

note:
It doesn't take over a dozen years to process such international trade statistics, not clear what explains the mismatch between link & text.
 
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9yv1gnzyvo

So, Trumpski invokes WWII era law that allows deportation without due process meant to combat wartime enemy countries from causing harm…Uses it against any Venezuelan suspected of being a Tren gang member and loads up some planes hoping to get them there before anyone catches on.

Judge has to rule on Sat in his PJs (not literally) to force the planes in air to turn around.

Trump admin defies judge and turns the detainees over to El Salvador anyways.

El Salvador literally replies, “oops”. So…now what?

I’m sure WH will claim they didn’t receive enough notice but we know that’s bs.

Is POTUS defying a judicial stay an impeachable offense?

Shiftless' comment - as long as the GOP control Congress there is no such thing as an "impeachable" offense because no matter what he does they won't act.
 
Shiftless2 said:
Is POTUS defying a judicial stay an impeachable offense?

Shiftless' comment - as long as the GOP control Congress there is no such thing as an "impeachable" offense because no matter what he does they won't act. #319
Click to expand...
Such federal employees are sworn to uphold the Constitution.
"The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president [Trump] and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear & violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the [U.S.] federal government which they did not like." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in proper decorum, reading written text on the senate floor, addressing Trump's 21/01/06 armed insurrection: broadcast PBS Tues. 21/01/19 (the day before Biden's inauguration), video-sound bite corroborated & extended by FOX FNS 21/01/24
Click to expand...
In practical terms the insurance for this is the integrity of the group, as tested one individual at a time.
Thus it too is not enforceable in this Trump era.
 
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