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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.
The MAGAt Republican — and yes as we watch it happen it is clear that this is not just Trump, it is the entire “Republican” Party — coup that is taking place, just as was described in Project 2025, involves ending federal involvement in public education. That trend is now underway. In my opinion, this part of the coup has several purposes. First, it will make it easier to convert education into a profit-making industry and, as you watch, a small group of uber-rich will come to own the industry. Second, it moves education decisions totally down to the states, and you will see the Blue States maintain education, while in the Red States schools will be turned from real education to indoctrination for religious and/or political purposes. Third, it will strongly exacerbate The Great Schism Trend as Red State citizens become even less literate and numerate than they already are, and turned even further into docile indoctrinated peasants.
The Trump administration is finalizing plans to dismantle the Education Department through an executive order that would build on the president’s campaign promise to hammer the longtime conservative target.
The order — which President Donald Trump is expected to sign sometime this month, according to a White House official — was expected to lay out a two-part strategy for shuttering the agency, according to two people familiar with the plans and granted anonymity to discuss them.
It would direct the department to craft a plan to wind down its functions using its existing administrative authority. But the order was also expected to call for the agency to inventory a complex set of laws needed to delegate the department’s powers to other agencies and then close the department, an acknowledgment that some of conservatives’ biggest desires for change hinge on congressional approval. Such an order would launch a complex initiative. Some conservatives concede they currently lack enough support for legislation to close the department […]
Katie Bo Lillis and Kaitlan Collins, Senior Reporter | Anchor and Chief CNN White House Correspondent - CNN
Stephan:
As you have no doubt noticed part of the “Republican” coup that Trump and Musk are engineering is to dismantle federal law enforcement, the FBI, and national security, the CIA, agencies. As the dismantlement of American democracy proceeds why is this happening? Again for several reasons, in my opinion. First, because “emperor” Trump wants to take revenge on the FBI for what they did about January 6th. As he made clear in his GAZA press conference today he also wants to get richer, just as his son said earlier, by taking over GAZA, forcing out two millions people, and turning it into a coastal resort. Second, the billionaire oligarchs who bought the government want to be able to do things internationally and they don’t want any spy agency reporting on them. The oligarchs are no longer nationalists. They have bought the American government, the Congress, and the Supreme Court and they want to control as much of the rest of the world as possible so all of them can become far richer, and some of them can become trillionaires. The “Republican” Congressional morons whose seats they have bought for them, don’t understand this. Or maybe they don’t care. Nor does the MAGAt media and commentator community. Listen to the Abby Philip program on CNN. She specializes in putting MAGAts on her show to debate with Independents and Democrats. Nothing is going to stop this but millions of Americans pushing back in every way possible. What are you doing?
CIA Director John Ratcliffe Credit: Reuters
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday became the first major national security agency to offer so-called buyouts to its entire workforce, a CIA spokesperson and two other sources familiar with the offer said, part of President Donald Trump’s broad effort to shrink the federal government and shape it to his agenda.
The offer — which tells federal employees that they can quit their jobs and receive roughly eight months of pay and benefits — had up until Tuesday not been made available to most national security roles in an apparent cognizance of their critical function to the security of the nation.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally decided he also wanted the CIA to be involved, one of the sources said.
The spokesperson said that the move is part of Ratcliffe’s efforts to “ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the Administration’s national security priorities,” adding that is “part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy.”
Still, even as the offer was sent to the entire workforce at the agency, it was not immediately clear whether all would be allowed to take it. […]
What is standing out for me as “emperor” Trump’s MAGAt coup proceeds is why the Democrats have been so spineless as this article describes. Why, for instance, has not a single Democratic Representative introduced an article of impeachment against Trump for his grotesque and illegal attempts through his vassals, and his co-president Elon Musk, to dismantle the American government to make the United States a pseudo-democracy like Hungary or Russia. It is perfectly obvious what is happening. I understand the introduction of articles of impeachment might not win, but it would create massive public debate. The news isn’t all bad. I was heartened to see the demonstration this weekend over the closing of USAID, but it is going to take much more spine and pushback. I am also hoping that the election of the new DNC chair, Ken Martin, will result in much more action from Democrats. I also wonder if MAGAt voters are beginning to realize what they have done. They should because Red states are going to be particularly impacted by this coup, and their lives are going to be notably impacted.
Newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman, Ken Martin. Credit: Wall Street Journal
What does the Democratic party believe in? It’s difficult to tell. In 2024, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris ran a campaign of moderation, reconciliation and emphasis on restoring institutional norms. This failed to capture much public attention when compared with the Trump campaign’s carnival of grievance. In the months since their defeat, the Democrats have been confused, conflicted and internally contentious over how to best proceed.
The results have been contradictory and ineffectual. The Democrats have alternated between declaring Trump a fascist and a would-be dictator, and congratulating themselves on peacefully handing over the reins of power to him; they have railed against his corruption and his subordination to the unelected South African billionaire Elon Musk, but have also made themselves available to cooperate with Musk’s project to gut the federal bureaucracy and reshape it in his own interests, the initiative that has been moronically termed “Doge”.
They pledge resistance to the Trumpist takeover of the state, and then pledge to work with Trump on […]
Not only is “emperor” Trump destroying America’s democracy, he is also devastatingly diminishing the stature of the United States in the world. Do you see foreign leaders from other democracies reposing trust and confidence in anything “emperor” Trump says? Do you think they will continue to share sensitive intelligence with his administration? This one man, who could not be hired as a school janitor because of his sex offenses, and multiple felonies, is literally destroying over eight decades of carefully constructed alliances and policies of support that made the United States the leading nation in the world.
Chaos and uncertainty are swirling around the Trump administration’s new order halting most foreign aid grants for three months – and introduced the possibility that organizations dependent on federal funds could soon face bankruptcy, according to a report in Politico.
By Monday, groups spanning from health providers to landmine removers were still digesting the Friday directive issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with some bewildered by its scope and still struggling to make sense of it, the report added.
“This ‘stop work’ order is cruel and deadly,” Health GAP executive director Asia Russell told Politico. “It will kill people.”
The sudden freeze, which reportedly shocked State Department officials, is spurring organizations to weigh which programs to cut and whether to trim employees or even cease operations, according to the publication.
“We operate on a shoestring budget,” the head of one non-governmental organization on the receiving end of funding from the State Department and USAID told Politico, who was granted anonymity “as they feared they would lose future contracts if they spoke out publicly.”
“In 30 days, you’ll start to see a very significant cash crunch across the board and probably […]
Part of the coup “emperor” Trump’s administration is carrying out involves suppressing, or bankrupting a free press, replacing it as Orban did in Hungary, with a misinformation press that supports the authoritarian government the administration is trying to create. Scum MAGAt Representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene are only too happy to help. This is their scheme to destroy npr/PBS both of which Trump dislikes.
DOGE Subcommittee Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene
The new House subcommittee designed to complement the work of Elon Musk has named its first target: the nonprofit news media.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s “Delivering on Government Efficiency” Subcommittee — or DOGE, mimicking its Musk-run analogue, the Department of Government Efficiency — is asking the leaders of PBS and NPR to testify next month.
DOGE Subcommittee Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, put out the request to the executives in a letter Monday morning, specifying a preference for the weeks of March 3 or March 24.
“As an organization that receives federal funds, both directly and indirectly through its member stations, NPR’s reporting should serve the entire public, not just a narrow slice of likeminded individuals and ideological interest groups,” Greene wrote in her Monday letter sent to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, with nearly identical language sent to PBS.
Greene’s letter to Maher specifically cited the network’s decision not to report on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in October 2020 and the April 2024 […]
Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech , Staff Writer - The Hill
Stephan:
The coup we are undergoing is putting millions of Americans at risk by screwing up their healthcare. There is confusion and chaos raging throughout the system, and I think we are going to very shortly see worsening health reports across the country.
“emperor” Trump is destroying the United States seeking personal revenge against people who have offended him and disrupting the functioning of the entire government in the process. Credit: The Nation
Public health experts worry the confusion stirred by a Trump administration funding freeze memo will not end quickly, harming public health services.
“It’s really hard to tell what’s actually happening, and I’m sure the agencies don’t know what’s happening and whether they should go forward or not, whether funding should continue or whether funding should stop,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of Global Health Policy at health policy nonprofit KFF. “It’s just a land of confusion right now.”
A memo issued by the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Monday directing a widespread pause to federal loans and grants set off a wave of uncertainty and alarm among federal assistance programs, federally funded health clinics, nonprofits and schools as they wondered if they would lose […]
Jeremy Faust, MD, MS, MA, Editor-in-Chief - MedPage Today
Stephan:
As a research scientist, I have published some 325 papers in seven disciplines in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. I have been doing this for 47 years, and in all that time I have never heard or read of a U.S. government agency censuring a science research publication. But that is where we are now in “emperor” Trump’s regime. I cannot adequately convey to you how desperately dangerous and bad this is. If a scientist or physician cannot publish a fact-based paper because they have used forbidden terms, then America’s decline is happening faster and is steeper than anything I would have predicted. Americans will no longer be able to access accurate information on certain topics on taxpayer-funded science websites because they are now being censured by “emperor” Trump’s politician watch guards.
The CDC has instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal, not merely its own internal periodicals, Inside Medicine has learned. The move aims to ensure that no “forbidden terms” appear in the work. The policy includes manuscripts that are in the revision stages at journal (but not officially accepted) and those already accepted for publication but not yet live.
In the order, CDC researchers were instructed to remove references to or mentions of a list of forbidden terms: “Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” according to an email sent to CDC employees (see below).”
An Expansion of an Emerging Censorship Regime at the CDC
The policy goes beyond the previously reported pause of the CDC’s own publications, including Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which has seen two issues go unreleased since Jan. 16, marking the first publication gap of any kind in approximately 60 years. Emerging Infectious […]
Olivia Rosane, Staff Writer - Common Dreams | AlterNet
Stephan:
What amounts to an oligarchical coup of the United States has just happened. The unelected billionaires who bought “emperor” Trump his office now have my, and probably your, complete personal financial data — anything any of us has ever filed with the federal government, as well as any military service, or education loan data under your name. This development also illustrates how weak and corrupted the American Congress has become. You and I no longer live in the same country we did this time last week.
Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.
Newly approved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk surrogates access to the system late on Friday, five people familiar with the situation toldThe New York Times. Bessent’s decision came the same day as news that David Lebryk, a career Treasury official who was acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, would step down after arguing with DOGE members over access to the system run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service that pays out over $6 trillion a year.
“Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on social media on Saturday. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. […]
