They Really Are Trying to Kill Us

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This is a special birthday edition of Perfidy Press Provocations. Enjoy the rest of your summer and be sure you’re registered to vote.

So far, we’ve seen Trump 2.0 undermine farmers, small businesses, workers, consumers, minorities, the sick, the elderly, the poor, the environment, and the economy as a whole while enriching his financial backers, family, and other insiders.

Beyond helping the rich get richer are some unspoken goals, ones anyone with an ounce of compassion would call sinister, not just self-serving. Consider environmental regulations:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback.(EPA press release 3/20/25)

Buried in those 31 actions is one that reveals the efficient cause of these changes. Under “Lowering the costs of living for American families” Zeldin says he intends to redirect 

enforcement resources to EPA’s core mission to relieve the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers (Enforcement Discretion)

Who knew relieving the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens was a core EPA mission? Is that in its enabling legislation? And Zeldin has been vowing to eliminate PFAS chemicals from drinking water while at the same time approving new PFAS-related pesticides. Linger a little over this:

Then, last fall, Republicans in Congress held the SNAP food assistance program — relied on by 42M people (that’s 1 out of every 8 of us) — hostage during the government shutdown, trying to own the Dems. Trump threatened to illegally withhold SNAP benefits from blue states if they didn’t turn over lists of SNAP recipients. SNAP costs the feds $120B a year, That’s a lot, but the illegal Iran war has cost taxpayers almost as much in half the time.

And what they’ve done to health care is far worse, according to Norman Ornstein, a conservative pundit and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has come to reject Trumpism along with today’s Republican party. Read what he has to say about the GOP’s multi-pronged attack on Americans’ health care in The New Republic, and see him expand on it in this video podcast. Read some of his specifics below.

If Trump’s deranged tweets and executive actions feel antisocial, that’s because they are. Many of his policies have deprived or endangered large swaths of the public while benefiting few. Layer those imposed adversities on a map, and almost no part of the country escapes misery. Could it be that imposing hardships and letting them fester is part of the plan?

Starting with Elon and his chainsaw, Trump’s minions have chipped away at congressionally-mandated social and environmental programs, whittling down federal aid to states, communities, families and individuals while hamstringing federal supervision. They hardly even bother to justify these actions anymore and when they do, most reporters duly accept their pronouncements at face value.

Why? FCC chief Brenden Carr is blackmailing TV networks with license removal if they don’t keep biasing news reports toward the administration. Disney has taken him to court over it, but even if that toady loses he’ll find other ways to enforce The Don’s directives. The criminals don’t want us to know what they’re up to. Throttling the media is just another way to obfuscate their intentions.

They will stop at nothing to remove obstacles in their roadmap to power. While court rulings have blocked some of their stratagems, these are but fingers in the dikes of democracy. Prepare for a 100-year flood.

In  that podcast, Norman Ornstein points to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which will cut $1T from Medicaid over ten years. Cagily scheduled to kick in next January, after the midterm elections, those cuts will:

• Create work requirements for some Medicaid recipients, few of whom can meet them
• Reduce reimbursements to hospitals whose ERs are flooded with patients who can’t pay for services, which will
• Cause more hospitals to close, shifting their burdens to other, less accessible ones that are already overstretched, causing long wait times, inadequate care, and more payment issues
• Shutter nursing homes (widely staffed by Haitian workers who have lost Temporary Protective Status and may soon be deported) when their patients get kicked off medicaid.

Meanwhile, Bobby Brainworms has cut back medical research, disease tracking, immunization schedules, and warnings about quack remedies. Americans are being sickened by previously rare infections such as Measles, Whooping Cough, and Tetanus, which can be fatal or cause lifelong health problems. Pathogens like E. coli, Salmonella, and schistosomiasis, are contaminating a growing array of foods. USDA has cut back on food inspections and inverted its food pyramid to put meat on top. Americans are sicker than they were under Biden while having fewer health resources, and that’s not an accident.

None of these consequences seem to have phased our rulers. It can only be that they want shit to happen or are at least okay with it. We need look no further than the gestapo-like mass detention of certain types of immigrants as proof that this administration at least has no problem treating people harshly and inhumanly. At most, they do it with vengeance and revel in the consequences.

Inflicting pain is an integral part of Trump’s shtick. As ill-informed and half-cocked he may be, Trump knows, as he learned at the knee of Roy Cohn, how to promise the moon, deny everything, blame others, grease palms, and threaten mayhem to get his way. These are the only things he’s good at, and despite his evident incapacity he’s still gleefully at it. But he’s running out of ammunition and it’s not working as well as it used to.

Even when Trump gets a comeuppance, the damage already done will afflict Americans for years to come. And even if Democrats mobilize Congress in January to pass bills to remediate it, the bills won’t withstand his vetoes. Perhaps compromise bipartisan ones that give Republicans some things they want could achieve part of that, but that’s a rather rocky road to mitigation.

And were the Dems bold enough to propose Medicaid-for-all legislation, you can imagine how lobbyist-driven legislators would beat it to death or turn it into weak tea that wouldn’t threaten the insurance, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries. Look at how Obamacare ended up subsidizing those sectors instead of bringing them under social control.

Be sure to vote, but don’t expect Congress to save your ass next year. Join organizations to rally people to oppose Trump’s assaults and indignities in whatever ways they can be challenged, monkey-wrenched, or countermanded, even if the harm doesn’t seem to affect you. Confront complicit and complacent lawmakers. Write postcards to voters in swing states. Give to food banks and homeless shelters. Do what it takes to turn this around.

As if your life depended on it.

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