If it's Thursday, this must be Budapest.
Only 1,437 days to go...
Living through these times…
“On the hardest days, books are always there for us. They’re part escape and part instruction.” ~Kelly Corrigan
How a mindful hobby could help you break your doom-scrolling habit - By making a conscious decision to change a habit – such as picking up your phone – you can replace it with one that’s more fulfilling. (With that in mind, I pulled unfinished needlepoint projects out of my closet and have begun working on them… I find it very relaxing!)
Six Magic Words to Stop Anxiety, by Mel Robbins: Ask yourself the question, “What if it all works out?”
Letting go of what you can’t control!
Finding the humor…
“The world’s finest geographers, experts who study the Earth’s natural environment, have concluded a decades-long council and determined that a Great Lake deserves to be named after a great state. So today, I’m issuing a proclamation declaring that hereinafter Lake Michigan shall be known as Lake Illinois. The proclamation has been forwarded to Google to ensure the world’s maps reflect this momentous change. In addition, the recent announcement that to protect the homeland, the United States will be purchasing Greenland, Illinois will now be annexing Green Bay to protect itself against enemies foreign and domestic. I’ve also instructed my team to work diligently to prepare for an important announcement next week regarding the Mississippi River. God bless America, and Bear Down.”
~ Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.” ~ Chuck Yeager
What I read every day…
Quote of the day:
“Trump’s cynical model of the world is not purely a matter of self-interest. His suspension of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is an actual policy agenda to enable American businesses to bribe officials overseas without violating American law. Trump himself has no need to grease anybody’s palms. He therefore appears to support this reform, as it were, because he genuinely believes in it. And unlike most of his flailing efforts to advance policy objectives, his pro-corruption agenda is comprehensive and well designed. How the rest of Trump’s presidency plays out is anyone’s guess. The consequences of legalizing corruption, however, will be utterly predictable.”
~ Jonathan Chait
What I’m reading today…
Trump’s Anarchic European Agenda
First and foremost, consider the “fantastic” Viktor Orbán, a perennial favorite of the president and a frequent guest to Mar-a-Lago…. Orbán has also turned his country into a “pillar” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). He prevented the extradition of Russian criminals, the Lyubishins, wanted by U.S. authorities during the first Trump administration. And his government has made no apology for its outreach to the mullahs of Tehran, seeking to deepen trade and investment links with the regime, and hosting a 2000-strong student population from Iran.
The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler
German corporations, large and small, helped retool the Weimar Republic as the Third Reich… For the industrialists who helped finance and supply the Hitler government, an unexpected return on their investment was slave labor. “I’ve just committed the greatest stupidity of my life. I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in the history of the world.”
The Cowardice of Senate Republicans
But when faced with another test of courage—standing up to Trump’s disastrous personnel choices—both men folded. They are up for reelection, and rather than risk the wrath of a Trump-backed primary challenger, they’ve chosen the path of least resistance.
If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?
FEMA’s role is to support state and local governments by coordinating federal agencies and providing financial aid and recovery assistance that states would otherwise struggle to supply on their own. FEMA doesn’t “take over,” as a misinformation campaign launched during Hurricane Helene claimed. Instead, it pools federal resources to allow states to recover faster from expensive disasters…States prone to frequent disasters, such as Louisiana and Florida, would face expensive recurring challenges that would likely exacerbate recovery delays and reduce their overall resilience.
The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump
I am talking about actions that individual people or private institutions took pre-emptively, with some measure of free will. The Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called this “anticipatory obedience.” In his 2017 book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” lesson No. 1 was “Do not obey in advance.” Those who anticipate the demands of a repressive government and submit to these demands before they are made, Snyder wrote, are “teaching power what it can do.”
Exit Surveys: Voters Love Ranked Choice Voting
Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a popular election reform, used in over 50 locations. Exit polls and post-election surveys consistently find that voters like and understand RCV by overwhelming margins.
How Elon Musk’s crusade against government could benefit Tesla
“Musk wants to run the Department of Transportation,” said Missy Cummings, a former senior safety adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “I’ve lost count of the number of investigations that are underway with Tesla. They will all be gone.”
Statement from the American Bar Association
Americans know there is a right way and a wrong way to proceed. What is being done is not the right way to pursue the change that is sought in our system of government. These actions do not make America stronger. They make us weaker. Many Americans are rightly concerned about how leaders who are elected, confirmed or appointed are proceeding to make changes… Americans expect better. Even among those who want change, no one wants their neighbor or their family to be treated this way. Yet that is exactly what is happening.
What Happened the Last Time a President Purged the Bureaucracy
While it is impossible to quantify a counterfactual, the cost of the anti-communist purges of the 1950s was clearly enormous and played out not just over the subsequent years but over decades. For instance, had expertise not been purged and dissent not been punished so severely across the government during the early 1950s, wiser heads might well have raised the right objections to America’s short-sighted anti-communism in East Asia, above all its rush to intervene in Vietnam. Does the Trump administration run the same risk of short-sightedness today?
What are tariffs and how do they work?
Tariffs are a way for countries to control international trade. By artificially raising the cost of importing goods, tariffs can incentivize would-be importers to instead purchase goods from domestic sellers, potentially strengthening the local economy. Politics can also play a role: governments can adjust tariffs to exert economic leverage over political rivals or retaliate against other tariffs or economic sanctions. Tariffs also generate revenue for importing countries, though in developed countries and in today’s global economy, they tend to be used more to achieve foreign policy goals than financial ones.
The Federal Workforce Resistance to Donald Trump Is Here
Defying court orders is how constitutional chaos unfolds. But the crisis began weeks ago, when the president ignored Congress’s express directives on how federal funding should be spent, and a critical mass of lawmakers rolled over and have yet to reassert themselves. The only way to cure executive arrogance—and yet more arrogation of power—is for people to mobilize, stand up, and remind those they elected where true power lies.
Refugee nonprofits in the Triangle scramble to cover funding gaps
Refugee resettlement groups across the Triangle are scrambling for funds and furloughing staff in response to new executive orders coming out of Washington, D.C.
Local businesses, schools, churches, social services organizations, and government offices are preparing for what could be traumatic social, cultural, and economic effects from the expulsion of potentially thousands of local residents, most of whom, Pew Research found, have lived, worked, studied, and ingrained themselves in the community for more than a decade.
Efficiency − or empire? How Elon Musk’s hostile takeover could end government as we know it
…the deeper motivations driving Musk’s involvement are unlikely to be purely altruistic…. One historical parallel in particular is striking. In 1600, the British East India Company, a merchant shipping firm, began with exclusive rights to conduct trade in the Indian Ocean region before slowly acquiring quasi-governmental powers and ultimately ruling with an iron fist over British colonies in Asia, including most of what is now India. In 1677, the company gained the right to mint currency on behalf of the British crown.
Trump moving to dismantle government’s public integrity guardrails
In a span of hours, word came that Trump had forced out leaders of offices responsible for government ethics and whistleblower complaints. And in a boon to corporations, he ordered a pause to enforcement of a decades-old law that prohibits American companies from bribing foreign governments to win business. All of that came on top of the earlier late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general who are tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at government agencies.
Despite the policy changes, our work will continue.
With so many changes happening very quickly, it is important we understand the significant impacts on migration policy and the families we serve in our community. The U.S. Refugee Admissions program (USRAP) is indefinitely suspended which means no refugees will be resettled in the US for at least 90 days. Refugees who were approved for resettlement in Asheville have had their travel canceled.
What I am watching…
“I think a lot of people are still suffering from a failure of imagination about how bad this could get. But when it comes to the expertise issues, you know, health vaccines, national security, the Defense Department, the FBI… there was something in me that always said, look…we're basically a sensible country. We have circuit breakers that kick in that make sure that people like, you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. never get near the levers of power or that Tulsi Gabbard is never going to be at the top…I guess we're not a sensible country.”