Monday, March 18, 2024

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

President Biden on Monday will sign an executive order aimed at expanding research and improving government initiatives on women’s health, a move that will coincide with a White House Women’s History Month reception.

The president’s executive order will “ensure women’s health is integrated and prioritized across the federal research portfolio and budget,” the White House said, with a focus on the administration’s Initiative on Women’s Health Research. 

In addition, Biden will announce more than 20 actions from federal agencies outlining ways they will prioritize research on women’s health. 

The executive order directs relevant agencies to strengthen research and data standards on women’s health with the purpose of better leveraging federal funding. It also directs agencies to prioritize funding for women’s health research and encourage innovation.

And Biden’s order will direct the Office of Management and Budget and the Gender Policy Council to assess gaps in federal funding for women’s health and identify potential changes.

In addition, the president and first lady Jill Biden will announce more than 20 commitments and actions through the Pentagon, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

Among the actions will be the launch of an effort that will direct investments of $200 million in fiscal year 2025 to fund new women’s health research. Biden has previously called on Congress to create a Fund for Women’s Health Research at the National Institutes of Health.

The executive order signing comes as the president and first lady are set to host guests for a White House reception to mark Women’s History Month. It also comes after the first lady in February announced $100 million in federal funding for research and development into women’s health through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.

Meanwhile, on the dark side ...

The bad:

Former President Donald Trump said that the members of the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection should be jailed.

Trump’s remarks come less than a week after a new report from the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight revealed that a Secret Service agent gave testimony that contradicted previous testimony from former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson.

In a Sunday post on Truth Social, Trump linked an article from the right-leaning website, Just The News, which claimed that the “Jan. 6 committee withheld crucial evidence from the public.” The article also said former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) interviewed the Secret Service agent whose testimony was just released as part of the report.

“[Cheney] should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Trump wrote. [snip]

Liz Cheney, vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, responded on X.

“Hi Donald: you know these are lies. You have had all the grand jury & J6 transcripts for many months,” she wrote. “You’re trying to halt your 1/6 trial because your VP, WH counsel, WH aides, campaign & DOJ officials etc will testify against you. You’re afraid of the truth and you should be....

We've noted the increasingly violent and unhinged rhetoric from the Malignant Loser as the legal and financial pressures mount.  Riling up the MAGAts, as he did on January 6, 2021, is a tell that he feels vulnerable and threatened and derives a sense of power and control from the mob.  Now he talks about jailing members of the January 6 committee while expressing his desire to release the insurrectionists (or, as he calls them, "hostages"). Need more proof of what his lawless, retribution style of "governing" would look like?  Read on.

The ugly

... [Trump] has big plans for California if he wins.

He has promised to use an expansive view of presidential power to undo state laws and policies on many fronts, including areas such as law enforcement and education where states, not the federal government, have traditionally been in charge.

Some examples:

He says he’ll close the U.S.-Mexico border on his first day in office — the day he has set aside to act as “a dictator” — and launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

His Santa Monica-born immigration advisor, Stephen Miller, says that if Democratic states such as California don’t cooperate, Trump could order National Guard units from red states such as Texas to cross their borders — a recipe for constitutional crisis.

Trump has promised to scrap President Biden’s programs to promote renewable energy, including subsidies for electric vehicles and charging stations. His advisors have proposed limiting California’s power to set fuel emission standards for automobiles.

He says he’ll stop the state from allowing Sacramento River water to flow into the Pacific to protect the Sacramento Delta. “We’re not going to let them get away with that any longer,” he said. (Water experts say it would be impractical and environmentally disastrous to divert the river's flow completely. Newsom has already suspended some environmental laws to send more water to reservoirs and is preparing to build a new water tunnel under the delta.).

Trump says he’ll send federal law enforcement officers into Oakland and other cities to stop rampant shoplifting. “If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store — shot!” he said.

And he says he will prosecute California healthcare providers if they comply with a state law that prohibits releasing information about minors' gender-related medical care to other states. (He called the law a “sick California scheme for violating federal laws against kidnapping [and] sex trafficking.”)...

That last piece of wanton cruelty, especially linking it to a practice he may have indulged in (waiting for that Epstein grand jury report!), marks the Malignant Loser as a craven monster, one of the most purely evil we've seen in our lifetimes.  He'd be running Putin's dystopian playbook, and California would be the biggest target, but certainly not the only one.


2 comments:

Mart said...

I was wondering what his unhinged rants about opening a giant water valve in NOCA, that would turn the central valley green and allow smelly rich people in Beverly Hills to take a proper shower, was all about. "He says he’ll stop the state from allowing Sacramento River water to flow into the Pacific to protect the Sacramento Delta." Jesus the stupid is strong in these people.

W. Hackwhacker said...

Mart -- we can't destroy any more brain cells trying to analyze what the Malignant Moron was riffing about lest we sink to the level of his cultists!