Donald Trump claims that he was left a mess by his predecessor and is in control of a “fine-tuned machine” remaking the government in his own image. But the reality is a deadly proposition for American citizens.

There was already a huge gap between open federal positions and the amount of nominations Trump has made, but his poor management in the first month of his presidency has made the situation even worse. Of the 549 key positions in the government requiring appointees to be nominated by Trump for Senate confirmation, so far only 34 people have been nominated, with only 14 of those confirmed.

There currently is no deputy Secretary of State, and the same vacancy exists at the Treasury and Education departments. Trump has only nominated 3 of the 15 nominees needed at that level.

Trump recently fired an official at Housing and Urban Development, along with a top official dealing with Latin American issues on the National Security Council for the sins of saying critical things about him. So instead of the amount of vacancies going down, as with his predecessors in their first year, with Trump it has gone up.

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There is something happening here, as demonstrated by the massive resistance being organized at Republican town halls recently.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) found that out when folks lined up out the door for his Iowa Falls event that started at 7:45 in the morning:

[blockquote style="border: solid #000000 1px; padding:10px;"] Lines outside of Grassley town hall. Started at 7:45 am; half of crowd can't get in pic.twitter.com/jdu6bfUsCA

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 21, 2017

Among the constituents that Grassley met was 62 year-old pig farmer Chris Peterson, who powerfully encapsulated the catastrophic consequences of destroying the Affordable Care Act, in language that Republicans like Grassley can clearly understand:

(go to article to see video of confrontation with Grassley)

GRASSLEY: I haven’t see you for a long time. How are you doing?

PETERSEN: I’ve been busy.

I am on Obamacare. If it wasn’t for Obamacare we wouldn’t be able to afford insurance.

With all due respect, sir, you’re the man that talked about the death panels.

We’re gonna create one great big death panel in this country that people can’t afford to get insurance. Don’t repeal Obamacare. Improve it, for God’s sakes. (cheers and applause)

A study released prior to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act showed that about 45,000 Americans were dying annually due to a lack of health coverage. The CBO recently reported that repealing Obamacare would eventually increase the number of uninsured Americans by 32 million, so Peterson’s statement is backed up by the facts.

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How far is President Trump willing to go in directing that the government’s investigative machinery be used to go after his opponents, real or perceived?

Charlie Savage and Eric Lichtblau have a good piece this morning that raises this question, by seizing on an important passage from Trump’s unhinged press conference on Thursday. Trump said this:

“I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks. Those are criminal leaks….It’s a criminal act.”

This came in response to questions about Trump’s tweets on Thursday morning, in which he lashed out at the media and at “low-life leakers” and vowed that the latter would be “caught.” The leakers were responsible for recent revelations that have rocked his administration politically. Among them: The news that our intelligence services have established contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign and that the Justice Department warned that former national security adviser Michael Flynn misrepresented his contacts with the Russian ambassador, making him vulnerable to blackmail.

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Moments after President Donald Trump concluded a press conference at which he unleashed numerous attacks on the press, his fundraising committee circulated a “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey” urging supporters to “do your part to fight back against the media’s attacks and deceptions.”

Trump and his administration have engaged in an unprecedented war on the press. The president routinely singles out legitimate outlets and reporters as “fake news,” and his chief strategist has labeled the press the “opposition party.” During his February 16 press conference, Trump was particularly "combative" with reporters, turning the event -- which was ostensibly to announce a new labor secretary nominee -- into a “screed against the media.”

The email blast from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which presumably is also an attempt to build its email list, calls his supporters “our last line of defense against the media’s hit jobs” and urges readers to fill out a “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey” in order to “do your part to fight back against the media’s attacks and deceptions”:




The survey asks respondents whether they “trust” CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC to “report fairly on Trump's presidency” and asks, “On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans”:



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[font size="+1"] Then they ask for donations to fund their campaign against the media:[/font]



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We knew it would be bad. But it’s even worse than we thought.

People are hitting the streets to protest by the hundreds of thousands, and ThinkProgress is working tirelessly to provide them with accurate, uncompromised information about the actions of this administration.

Our work was cited in the first lawsuit filed against Trump.

We set an initial goal of $250,000 for the Trump Investigative Fund. With the help of thousands of people, we reached that goal. It has allowed us to begin expanding our capacity to hold Trump accountable.

But now we need to scale our capacity to the size of the threat.

Can you help us reach our new goal of $500,000? If you kick in $40, we’ll send you this t-shirt.




ThinkProgress reporting is already making an impact across the board.

Our exclusive investigation revealed that Kuwait, under political pressure, moved its annual event to the Trump Hotel. Our story was cited by USA Today as evidence of Trump’s corruption and “exactly what the Founding Fathers were trying to protect against.” It was also cited in the first lawsuit against Trump over his conflicts of interest.

We comprehensively catalogued all of Donald Trump’s promises — 663 of them and counting. This project involved reviewing transcripts of all Trump’s speeches and media appearances during the campaign, a database that consisted of over 4 million words. Our work revealed that, Trump failed to deliver on 34 of the 36 things he promised to do in his first day.

ThinkProgress exclusively reported on a gag order placed on the renewables team at the Department of Energy. “[W]e are PROHIBITED from any social media post (from personal or business handles) regarding your work, attendance at any meeting, etc until further notice,” ordered the email obtained by ThinkProgress.

As his grip on the federal bureaucracy strengthens, the challenge of holding Trump accountable grows exponentially.
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Donald Trump’s administration has now completed its first full personal scandal cycle. It began with the revelation of Mike Flynn’s discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the subsequent claims that Vice President Mike Pence’s defense of Flynn stemmed from false information provided by the then-national security advisor, followed on Monday night by Flynn’s resignation. Since Flynn’s story has a neat beginning, middle, and end, it’s tempting to treat the underlying scandal as essentially complete and to begin focusing on the avalanche of other controversies spilling out from the Trump White House.

That would be a grave mistake. The Trump-Russia file, which concerns fundamental questions of national security, is far more deserving of close scrutiny by Congress, the media, law enforcement, and the public than any of the White House’s many other alleged misdeeds. And the Flynn phone calls are only the beginning, not the end, of the scandal in question.

When news first emerged last month that Flynn spoke to Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the transition, he and other White House officials — notably Vice President Pence — insisted that the talks did not include any discussion of sanctions. Now Flynn has all but declared that he lied to Pence, assuming sole responsibility for both the possible illegal conversations and the lies the administration proffered to the American public. But why should we believe that version of events when this White House has given us so many reasons for doubt? It is just as reasonable to believe that Flynn, rather than freelancing during the phone calls, was acting with approval, in accordance with the Trump team’s Russia policy.

And that raises the question of what motivates Trump’s Russia policy in the first place. The famed dossier compiled by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele, alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin cultivated Trump over several years as part of a plan to subvert the West, contained some errors, but U.S. officials have told CNN that they have corroborated some of its information. Trump and Putin have dismissed the dossier’s allegations, but Trump was vehement during the campaign about the need to transform relations with Putin’s regime and perhaps lift all sanctions against Russia.
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Working-class whites are the biggest beneficiaries of federal poverty-reduction programs, even though blacks and Hispanics have substantially higher rates of poverty, according to a new study to be released Thursday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Government assistance and tax credits lifted 6.2 million working-class whites out of poverty in 2014, more than any other racial or ethnic demographic. Half of all working-age adults without college degrees lifted out of poverty by safety-net programs are white; nearly a quarter are black and a fifth are Hispanic.



The result does not simply reflect the fact that there are more white people in the country. The percentage of otherwise poor whites lifted from poverty by government safety-net programs is higher, at 44 percent, compared to 35 percent of otherwise poor minorities, the study concluded.

Among working-class minorities, blacks also benefit significantly from government programs, with 43 percent of otherwise poor blacks being lifted from poverty by the safety net. Only 28 percent of otherwise poor Hispanics were lifted from poverty by these programs.
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Before former President Obama left office, he made a last-ditch effort to protect Planned Parenthood’s state funding from conservative governors and state legislatures that might seek to take it away.

But Republicans in Congress are working to block that effort using an obscure law called the Congressional Review Act, which lets Congress fast-track a resolution to disapprove of new federal agency rules within 60 days of their passage.

On Thursday, the House voted 230-188 to overturn a rule Obama signed in December that would prohibit discriminating against family planning providers for reasons other than the quality of care they offer.

The resolution of disapproval now moves to the Senate, where it will probably pass because it only requires a simple 51-vote majority, and President Trump will probably sign it, since he supports defunding Planned Parenthood.

To be clear, this vote isn’t about the big federal “defund Planned Parenthood” bill that Republicans have promised to pass at the same time as they repeal the Affordable Care Act. That bill, which has yet to be introduced, would block Planned Parenthood from accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicaid reimbursements.
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