Mostly Monday Reads: Trump brings back the Red Scare and Colonialism

“I’ve been called a dumb motherf*ker by MAGA over 6,000 times in the last 24 hours. Every comment and message spelled it with a b. I think President Trump lied to us. Yesterday’s cartoon has over 20,000 replies if you think I’m exaggerating.” John Buss, @repeat1968 (dkat: this is the cartoon)

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

As we close in on the midterms, the country’s political landscape couldn’t be crazier if it tried. You would think that a “mature” democracy could rise to discourse above name-calling and jingoism. If you can run on the progress you’ve made, then I guess that’s all that’s left to you. You also need a lot of jazz hands to cover up what’s really going on. The two top headlines for me today should be beyond belief, but remember how so much of this has managed to push the Iran/Israeli/USA War off the front pages.

This first article is from The Guardian, which has been my go-to newspaper since high school.  “Greenland issues ‘strong warning’ as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill. Island’s government says no approval given after Greenland Energy brings kit ashore for exploratory drilling.”

An American oil company connected to Donald Trump is preparing to sink wells in remote Greenland despite not having received permission from the local authorities.

As the US president renews his threats to claim the vast Arctic territory, materials to prepare for drilling were brought ashore in recent days on Greenland’s eastern coast.

That has prompted Greenland’s government to issue a “strong warning” that no approval had been granted to land the kit. “All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority – before they are carried out,” the government said in a statement.

Two days later, Trump made his latest menacing post on Truth Social, showing himself looming over a Greenlandic village.

Executives of Greenland Energy, a Texas company set up last year, have claimed that $1tn of crude may lie beneath the Jameson Land region. They announced plans to spend $60m drilling two wells to find out.

Although Greenland stopped issuing new oil licences in 2021 on environmental grounds, a UK company called 80 Mile had secured exploration rights in Jameson Land. Greenland Energy’s corporate filings say it will take a majority stake in the project in exchange for funding the exploration, though it still needs government permission to proceed.

Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr Phil, a prominent rightwing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters”.

It has also appointed as a director a US navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defence plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital”.

Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation”.

After a company representative falsely claimed at a Jameson Land community meeting in June that it had permission to land drilling equipment, Swets said: “Our enthusiasm for the project led us to communicate in a way that created confusion.”

But the next month, local people in the sparsely populated region noticed a tug pulling a barge shorewards and unloading a dozen containers. “The goal was to get the equipment onshore at Nunap Qeqqa [Jameson Land] in connection with planned oil exploration drilling,” the Greenland government’s statement said.

The Danish investigative outlet Danwatch quoted the head of the shipping company as confirming the delivery was for Greenland Energy.

Greenland Energy has declined to respond to questions from the Guardian. A letter it sent to shareholders on Thursday said: “Recent high-level meetings between project leadership and Greenlandic regulatory and oversight authorities have been constructive, and we continue to be encouraged by the progress being made toward the remaining approvals required for drilling.” It said that after those discussions, just one well would be drilled to begin with.

There’s a lot more at the link if you’re interested. As I mentioned before, the campaign mood this year is peak mud slinging. This Rex Hupke Op-Ed at USA Today sums it up well. We’re not only into colonialism these days, but we’re also seeing the Red Scare tactics. I can’t imagine this appealing to anyone under 80, but who knows these days?  “Democratic extremism? GOP spent a decade riding extremism to power.  Republicans have spent the past decade worshiping the most extreme president in our nation’s history, a man with an almost impossibly long history of loathsome behavior and malicious dishonesty.”

Between now and the midterm elections, and probably well beyond that, you’ll hear endless chatter about “Democratic extremism,” and it will be Hilarious with a capital “H,” because it will all come from the mouths of Republicans.

“The Democrats want to destroy America!” they’ll holler.

“The Democrats are all socialists!” they’ll rail, unable to define socialism if their lives depended on it.

“No, better yet,” they’ll scream, veins bulging in their furrowed brows, “the Democrats are COMMUNISTS!!”

Oh my, the horror! Someone pull up my fainting chair, I seem to have caught the vapors!

Let’s put this nonsensical rhetoric to bed right now. Republicans have spent the past decade worshiping the most extreme president in our nation’s history, a man with an almost impossibly long history of loathsome behavior and malicious dishonesty. While doing so, they have embraced some of the most extreme political views and policies imaginable, shattering political norms and leveraging hate and division to gain power.

GOP lawmakers rallied behind a fight to do away with birthright citizenship. They have unapologetically supported federal immigration agents who shot and killed innocent Americans while also working to deport U.S. citizens and ripping apart communities across the country.

They allowed Elon Musk, a childish unelected billionaire with no knowledge of how our government works, to come along and gut the federal workforce.

They have confirmed wildly unqualified Cabinet officials like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated because he endorsed Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, and watched as he spread dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation and eliminated key jobs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Already this year, under Kennedy’s leadership, measles cases in America have hit a 35-year high.

Reelecting Donald Trump was about as extreme as it gets

There’s plenty more where that comes from at the link.  Scott McFarland, writing at his SubStack Scott MacFarlane Reports, has the headline: “Trump Turns National Parks into Piggybank, Cutbacks and Setbacks Hammer America’s National Parks in the Shadow of Trump’s Vanity Projects.”

There are enormous canyons.

Geysers.

Majestic cliffs.

Waterfalls and wildlife.

Rainforests and reindeer.

But in America’s national parks under President Trump, the most dramatic sight might be the rapid shifting of taxpayer and donor money.

Internal park service records obtained by Scott MacFarlane Reports reveal a controversial and overwhelming re-routing of money to Trump vanity projects.

The topline dollar figures are astounding, according to multiple sources inside the US Department of Interior, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to news media.

The records show more than $323 million have been made available for upgrades and projects on the White House grounds this year.

That’s a dramatic, nearly 5000 percent increase from the $7.5 million spent on White House grounds projects in 2024.

On the National Mall in Washington, nearly $100 million was made available for projects this year. That’s more than ten times larger than the $9 million provided for the Mall in 2024.

The internal park service records show declines in the money allotted to – or projected for use at – dozens of other major U.S. parks this year. There were multi-million dollar reductions in funds for Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon national parks, which are some of the flagship attractions of America’s National Park Service.

“The National Park Service is being used as a piggy bank for Trump’s vanity projects,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which advocates on behalf of current and former parks employees. Whitehouse said, “The National Parks Service and the Department of Interior are giving Trump all of the money that he wants.”

The shifting of funds slows – or delays – a range of projects big and small at National Park facilities, while expediting work on Trump’s pet projects in Washington, D.C.

“That’s costing the American people,” Whitehouse said, “That’s hurting the rest of our country.”

There’s so much bad policy and actions coming from Orange Caligula’s orders and policies that the press doesn’t appear to be able to keep up with it.  I just recently read an article on the delegalization.  This is a racist, xenophobic move by the Trump administration to remove immigrants here legally from the country.  This is from Mother Jones. It’s from last fall, but the article I tried to read about the current situation with Haitians was behind a paywall at The New Yorker.  I was unaware of what was going on. Again, we need a lot more people reporting on these pogroms. This is the headline from Isabela Dias’ reporting. “Trump Is Making Thousands of Rule-Abiding Immigrants Undocumented. Inside the largest delegalization campaign in modern US history.”

Nathaly Maestre has tried to follow her doctors’ instructions to the letter. Her obstetrician and perinatologist were clear: At 40, eight months into a high-risk pregnancy, and after a miscarriage last year, she has to avoid unnecessary stress.

But that has become impossible. In May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protection from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States. Overnight, Maestre and her partner, Luis Guillermo, found themselves without status—despite following all the rules.

“You try not to think so much about what’s happening outside,” Maestre told me in Spanish, her voice breaking. But it is hard “with all these sudden, abrupt changes.”

Fleeing persecution from pro-government militias in Venezuela, Maestre and Luis Guillermo came to the United States on tourist visas in September 2021 and later applied for asylum. In the fall of 2023, another option became available: Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. This stopgap shield from deportation for people who cannot safely return to their countries of origin because of armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances has protected roughly 600,000 Venezuelans—until now.

President Donald Trump’s termination of TPS for Venezuelans is part of the largest delegalization campaign in modern US history. “A single act of stripping immigration status in one fell swoop,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney with the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy representing TPS holders in a lawsuit against the government. The plan, he added, is central to the administration’s mass deportation goals as it scrambles to scale up US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests to an improbable 3,000 a day. “This is a community that has recently provided information to the government about their whereabouts, rendering them all vulnerable to deportation, [which] gives the government the opportunity to go after a lot of them—very quickly.”

Adelys Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan-American Caucus, has received thousands of messages from Venezuelans who have lost status under Trump, wondering what to do. Some have had panic attacks. Many lack travel documents because they can’t simply go to a nearby Venezuelan consulate and renew an expired passport—all services have been paused since 2023. “You have a whole community feeling hunted,” she said, “feeling persecuted all over again.”

Again, please read more at the link. And I hate to be the bearer of Fox News, but this is today’s headline on that subject. “US State Department has yanked more than 175k visas under Trump administration so far. ‘The majority of these visas were revoked due to law enforcement encounters for a range of criminal activity… ‘ the department noted.”  Yeah, right, I believe that. I’m not actually going to print any of the story or show the film, because it’s the usual bugaboo stereotype.  I’m certain a more reasonable analysis of the data will come later from other sources. Or at least I hope so.

Well, that’s all I can stand to talk about today.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Please VOTE when it’s your turn!