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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Criminal “king” Trump is reaching down to the smallest detail of government structure to do everything he can to cripple any preparation for climate change. Am I exaggerating? Read this. It is my prediction based on 43 years of research that by 2040 — just 15 years from now — as a result of what Trump and the spineless Republican members of Congress are doing the United States will go through a civilization-altering crisis.
The federal government is getting rid of all the EV chargers installed on government property. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty
As part of its continued efforts to own the libs, or get rid of anything President Trump does not like or understand, the General Services Administration is gearing up to remove electric chargers from all federal properties nationwide.
According to the GSA, the hundreds of chargers and estimated 8,000 plugs available for federal workers to charge their cars are “not mission critical.” The agency, which manages buildings owned by the federal government as well as vehicles, will also offload any EVs purchased under the Biden administration.
The move, while malicious, is not surprising considering the GOP’s general disdain for electric vehicles and the green energy movement. President Trump is intent on wiping just about any green policy enacted by the prior administration after spending years railing against EV mandates. He is currently fighting to override California’s heightened emissions standards and requirement that all cars sold in the state be electric by 2035.
President Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act included significant funding to help supercharge the clean energy […]
I completely agree with what John Alexander says here. What stands out for me more than anything else in the coup we are undergoing is the spinelessness and lack of ethics of the entire Republican Party. We have an election coming in 2026 — if criminal Trump hasn’t suspended or completely rigged elections, following Putin’s model. And, of course, you know that oligarchs led my Musk will attempt to buy any House or Senate seats for their servants that come up for a vote. So, what do we do? We vote straight Democratic for the whole ballot. Every Republican candidate must be defeated. This has nothing to do with political philosophy. This is about whether the United States continues as a genuine honorable democracy.
The Republican cowards of Congress Credit:WBUR
There are no greater cowards than the Republican members of Congressional House of Representatives and the US Senate. Collectively they have betrayed the American people and forsaken all of the real heroes who gave their lives to protect our freedom. Knowingly, they relinquished their constitutionally mandated responsibilities and placed fealty to an individual above any sense of loyalty to their oath of office or personal integrity.
With unfettered hypocrisy the new Trump Administration rebukes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to the point of erasing American history, while endorsing their quixotic version of meritocracy. Compounded by the unconscionable cowardice of the GOP members of the Senate, they have ratified the single least qualified Cabinet in modern U.S. history. Hegseth as Secretary of Defense was the first. A Fox News second-stringer with no successful experience in organizational leadership, and only low-level military experience, was nominated over tens of thousands of better qualified people. Similarly, Tulsi Gabbard has no intelligence experience, is considered a national security risk and yet became the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Again, there were […]
Part of the scheme criminal Trump and the spineless utterly unethical Republican Party are carrying out in the coup they described in Project 2025, and are now carrying out, is to destroy and cease doing anything to reduce the impact of climate change. Trump explicitly wants to keep the United States trapped in carbon energy. It illustrates his absolute contempt for your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your children and their children.
Credit: Grist / Getty
In keeping with the promises he made while on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump has begun the process of shrinking the Environmental Protection Agency. It started on January 28, about a week after he was sworn in for his second term. That day, around 2 million employees across the federal government received an email saying they could either accept a “deal” to resign and receive eight months of pay or remain in their jobs and risk being laid off soon.
A few days later, on February 1, over 1,100 EPA workers, all of whom are still in the trial period of their positions, received a second email informing them that the administration has the right to immediately terminate them. While some of these employees are in their first year at the EPA, others had recently switched into new roles after spending decades in the agency.
The following week brought another blow. The new Trump-appointed […]
Brakkton Booker, National Political Correspondent - Politico
Stephan:
Trump clearly sees himself not so much as the President as an authoritarian king with sovereignty over the United States. And he has no plan to leave office. Nothing is going to stop this but millions of Americans out non-viollently protesting every day. Here’s something you can do. I got an email from a reader asking me not to buy anything. Not to spend a penny next Friday, 28 February. My wife, Ronlyn and I discussed this and we plan to do it. I ask every reader to join us. Buy nothing, and ask everyone on your email contact list to join you on Friday the 28th buying nothing.
The crowd in the East Room on Thursday, which included athletes like famed golfer Tiger Woods, chanted “four more years!” Credit: Pool photo
The Constitution expressly forbids presidents from running for a third term. But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump from raising it repeatedly — and this time from an official White House event.
“Should I run again? You tell me.” Trump said on Thursday before a crowded East Room filled with mostly Black supporters who were there for a Black History Month event held just a month into his second term.
The crowd, which included elected officials, like Republicans Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Rep. John James of Michigan, as well as political appointees and athletes like famed golfer Tiger Woods, responded with chants of: “Four more years!”
Trump joked that the reaction from the crowd — and his mere floating of the idea, which he frequently does before friendly crowds but the first time he has done so in an […]
Lizzie Presser, Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Kavitha Surana, Staff Writers - ProPublica
Stephan:
As you know if you read SR regularly, I don’t care about political partisanship. SR is based on objectively verifiable social outcome data. What I care about is: does something foster and increase wellbeing at every level of the matrix of life, or does it decrease it? Here are facts about what has happened to the health of pregnant women in the states in which American voters have given control of their lives to the unethical anti-democratic White supremacy male-dominance Republican Party. It is horrifying. I certainly would not want to have any woman I cared about get pregnant in Texas.
Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion in 2021, ProPublica found in a first-of-its-kind data analysis.
The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found.
The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital.
ProPublica previously reported on two such cases in which miscarrying women in Texas died of sepsis after doctors delayed evacuating their uteruses. Doing so would have been considered an abortion.
The new reporting shows that, after the state banned abortion, dozens more pregnant and postpartum women died in Texas hospitals than had in pre-pandemic years, which ProPublica used as a baseline to avoid COVID-19-related distortions. As the maternal mortality rate dropped nationally, ProPublica found, it rose substantially in Texas.
ProPublica’s analysis is the most detailed look yet at a rise in life-threatening complications for women losing a pregnancy after Texas banned abortion. It raises concerns that the same pattern may be occurring […]
Adam Cancryn, Megan Messerly and David Lim, Staff Writers - Politico
Stephan:
America’s already poor illness profit system is going to get much worse. I find it hard to believe that “king” Trump and the Republicans have such little concern for the people who voted them into office. It is going to be interesting, if tragic, to watch Trump voters face the reality of what they have done, as all the social systems that aid their lives are trashed.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks after being sworn in as Health and Human Services Secretary in the Oval Office on Feb. 13, 2025. Credit: Alex Brandon / AP
The Trump administration carried out more mass firings across the Health and Human Services Department this weekend, continuing a chaotic purge of the federal workforce that career officials and lawmakers warned would hurt key programs and impair efforts to track threats to public health.
The cuts hit staffers at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, several people with knowledge of the firings told POLITICO. The administration also terminated some staff at the office responsible for emergency preparedness and response.
The firings were part of a culling of roughly 3,600 probationary employees across the sprawling department that began earlier this week with terminations primarily at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health.
Trump officials on Friday cast the layoffs imposed by billionaire Elon […]
Having worked in the Pentagon directly with two Chiefs of Naval Operations, as well as the other Joint Chiefs, I have a very real sense of the chaos Hegseth, who is appallingly unqualified to be Secretary of Defense, is going to cause as he and “king” Trump disrupt the command order, and attempt to cut the Defense Department budget by 40% over five years. What I am waiting to see is how the oligarchs who own the corporations that make huge profits from the military budget are going to respond. Anyone capable of rational thought knows that “king” Trump almost never tells the truth about anything. For instance, he not only lies about how much the U.S. has spent to support Ukraine; the actual figure is about 50% lower. But more relevantly, about 70% of that support doesn’t go to Ukraine, it goes to American military-industrial corporations that employ tens of thousands of American voters, largely in Red states, to make the missiles, bombs, and bullets the Ukrainians use to defend themselves against the Russian invasion.
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Credit: DVIDS
Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed senior Pentagon officials and military leaders to forge plans that would result in an 8 percent cut to the defense budget for each year over the next five years.
The proposed cuts were outlined in a memo issued Tuesday, which ordered a reduction in the Middle East and Europe military commands. On the flip side, it would exempt 17 entities, including a program to modernize nuclear weapons, Virginia-class submarines, attack drones, surface ships, missile defense and cybersecurity, multiple outlets reported Wednesday.
The acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses said Wednesday that reduction, which is projected to slash $50 billion off of the defense budget, would help pay for President Trump’s administration’s defense priorities, including border security and the “Iron Dome for America” missile defense system.
The Department of Defense (DOD) is looking to end “unnecessary spending that set our military back” like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and climate change programs, according to Salesses.
“The Department will develop a list of potential offsets that could be used to fund these […]
I can tell you from personal experience that the IRS has never been efficient or easy to work with. I spent four years trying to get a mistake the IRS made in not correctly registering a payment so small I couldn’t buy a new monitor for my computer sorted out. It didn’t matter that I sent proof of the payment over and over and over, so I finally just paid it again to end the nonsense. And, as I wrote the certified letters I kept thinking how is it that billionaires manipulate their taxes, and yet the IRS never seems to have the time or people to deal with their scams. So now that “king” Trump has just gutted the IRS staff I cannot imagine how dysfunctional the IRS is going to become just as tax season begins.
The IRS is laying off more than 6,000 employees as part of the Trump administration’s widespread downsizing of the federal government. The agency had added thousands of workers in recent years in an effort to improve customer service and beef up collection of unpaid taxes. Credit: npr
The Internal Revenue Service, better-known as the IRS, is cutting more than 6,000 jobs in the middle of a busy tax season.
The cuts are part of a widespread downsizing throughout the federal government, being led by Elon Musk’s deputies at the informal “Department of Government Efficiency.”
IRS employees were notified about the looming job cuts on Thursday. Most of the people affected are “probationary” workers who had been on the job for a limited time.
Landing right in the middle of the tax season, the job cuts are expected to make it harder for taxpayers to get questions answered and for the government to collect all of the money it’s owed.
The move drew protests from government watchdogs, who worry it will compromise the government’s ability to go after wealthy tax […]
