The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America
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Shiftless2
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Fewer items and lesser quality
Shiftless2
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Now that you've seen the comparison in #1,782
Good morning! Donald Trump spent the week insisting that all is well. Grocery prices are down, electricity is down, cars are down, gas is down, and Thanksgiving will apparently be cheaper than at any point since the Mayflower docked. He told this to foreign dignitaries over dinner as if reading aloud from a parallel universe, citing a “very powerful report” from Walmart that somehow proves the cost of living has plummeted under his leadership.
The problem? The “powerful report” was a sales promotion for a stripped-down holiday meal. Walmart’s “for-ten-under-forty-bucks” feast includes six fewer items than last year’s and relies on generic brands and shrinkflation as a marketing trick, not economic policy. But in Trump’s America, coupons have replaced data, and the difference between a discount and a delusion has been erased by executive order.
BBC Verify fact-checked the president’s economic fairy tales and found the story rotting on the shelf. Grocery prices have risen 2.7 percent since he took office, with coffee up nearly 19 percent and ground beef up 13. His 50 percent tariff on Brazilian beans hasn’t brought relief so much as higher prices and empty shelves. Electricity, which he promised to cut in half, has instead climbed 11 percent while his war on renewables kneecaps supply. Cars now cost over $50,000 on average, gas remains well above $3 a gallon, and his tariff tantrums have added at least another percentage point to inflation.
And then there’s food. Not prices this time, but access. A federal judge in Rhode Island had to order the president of the United States to feed his citizens, ruling that the Trump administration’s refusal to release full November SNAP benefits was causing “irreparable harm.” Judge John McConnell called out the USDA’s incompetence, noting that 42 million Americans were on the brink of hunger because the government couldn’t be bothered to push a button.
The administration tried to pass off “partial payments” as progress, Washingtonese for “we did nothing and wrote a memo about it.” McConnell wasn’t buying it. In a scathing ruling, he ordered the USDA to draw immediately from both the $5.5 billion contingency fund and the $23 billion Section 32 fund (normally used for school lunches and child nutrition) to make full payments by Friday, November 7. He rejected the USDA’s claim that doing so would ....
MORE>
Good morning! Donald Trump spent the week insisting that all is well. Grocery prices are down, electricity is down, cars are down, gas is down, and Thanksgiving will apparently be cheaper than at any point since the Mayflower docked. He told this to foreign dignitaries over dinner as if reading aloud from a parallel universe, citing a “very powerful report” from Walmart that somehow proves the cost of living has plummeted under his leadership.
The problem? The “powerful report” was a sales promotion for a stripped-down holiday meal. Walmart’s “for-ten-under-forty-bucks” feast includes six fewer items than last year’s and relies on generic brands and shrinkflation as a marketing trick, not economic policy. But in Trump’s America, coupons have replaced data, and the difference between a discount and a delusion has been erased by executive order.
BBC Verify fact-checked the president’s economic fairy tales and found the story rotting on the shelf. Grocery prices have risen 2.7 percent since he took office, with coffee up nearly 19 percent and ground beef up 13. His 50 percent tariff on Brazilian beans hasn’t brought relief so much as higher prices and empty shelves. Electricity, which he promised to cut in half, has instead climbed 11 percent while his war on renewables kneecaps supply. Cars now cost over $50,000 on average, gas remains well above $3 a gallon, and his tariff tantrums have added at least another percentage point to inflation.
And then there’s food. Not prices this time, but access. A federal judge in Rhode Island had to order the president of the United States to feed his citizens, ruling that the Trump administration’s refusal to release full November SNAP benefits was causing “irreparable harm.” Judge John McConnell called out the USDA’s incompetence, noting that 42 million Americans were on the brink of hunger because the government couldn’t be bothered to push a button.
The administration tried to pass off “partial payments” as progress, Washingtonese for “we did nothing and wrote a memo about it.” McConnell wasn’t buying it. In a scathing ruling, he ordered the USDA to draw immediately from both the $5.5 billion contingency fund and the $23 billion Section 32 fund (normally used for school lunches and child nutrition) to make full payments by Friday, November 7. He rejected the USDA’s claim that doing so would ....
MORE>
Shiftless2
Well-known member
If you ever doubted it was about anything except the cruelty
That would explain it, certainly.
It's not the only possible explanation.
I suspect there's also a simple authoritarian element. Trump wants to be obeyed, regardless of how unreasonable his commands are.
That's substantiated by Trump's loyalty purge of the U.S. military, and such shocking excesses as demolishing the white house East wing.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Shiftless2
Well-known member
There you have it
The GOP Gerrymandered 5 more Rep. seats from Texas
Perhaps the Republicans believed the Democrats wouldn't retaliate, respond, as the Democrats did in California
Gerrymandering 5 more Dem. house seats.
California and Texas Are Going Full Gilded Age
Critics of partisan redistricting efforts overlook a key tradition from American history.By Joshua Zeitz11/03/2025 09:34 AM EST
Joshua Zeitz, a Politico Magazine contributing writer, is the author of Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation (May 2023). Follow him @joshuamzeitz.
... California voters will go to the polls to decide whether the state should authorize mid-decade redistricting to counter gerrymandering in Republican states and keep Democrats competitive in the House. The measure has divided the party, which in recent decades has made independent redistricting commissions — bodies designed to take map-drawing out of politicians’ hands and prevent the kind of mid-decade rewrites used for partisan gain — almost an article of faith, a way to prove their commitment to process, fairness and the broader health of democracy itself.
To its critics, the idea smacks of political opportunism dressed up as reform; to its supporters, it’s a necessary corrective to similar Republican maneuvers in Texas, Indiana and North Carolina. “If one side is going to cheat, all bets are off,” Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico told Mother Jones. “Maybe that kind of pressure will convince our Republican colleagues and the president to walk back from the brink.”
For all the modern talk of violating democratic “norms” during the Trump era, however, strategic redistricting has always been a powerful weapon in American politics. Efforts by politicians to tilt the electoral playing field through redistricting and other manipulations are almost as old as American democracy itself, and indeed, by the late 19th century, both parties had turned redistricting into a blood sport.
What’s unfolding in California is less a break from tradition than a reversion to it — ...