Donald Trump has been the King of Chaos since way back, but he etched new chapters with his pyrotechnic feud with Elon Musk. In just the past few weeks he dispatched National Guardsmen and Marines to Los Angeles and threatened to jail California’s governor for resisting the deployment.
He continued shredding of both domestic and global public health programs. RFK Jr. fired the government’s entire vaccine advisory panel and installed vaccine skeptics to some of the vacancies. And Trump intensified his jihad against Harvard, halting admission of foreign students.
How the Trump-Musk brawl will end is yet to be determined, but it started with Trump’s withdrawal of the nomination of a Musk ally to be head of NASA (a vital funding supplier for the owner of SpaceX), followed by Musk’s assailing the Trump-endorsed (and House-passed) “One Big Beautiful Bill” over its expansion of the US debt by more than $3 trillion as a ‘disgusting abomination.”
Trump then threatened to cancel Musk’s billions in government contracts and Musk called for Trump’s impeachment and replacement by Vice President JD Vance. Musk followed that with the explosive charge that Trump appeared in FBI files on Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual exploitation of underage girls (a claim Musk later deleted).
In conversation with a group of mainstream reporters, Trump referred to Musk as “a man who has lost his mind,” a possible reference to a New York Times story disclosing that Musk was a frequent user of psychotropic drugs. Or possibly a reference to the certifiable genius’s over-the-top behavior—waving a Nazi-style salute and also a chain saw, fathering 14 children, threatening to start a third political party and claiming that Trump and Republicans would not have been elected without his $290M support (Trump raised $1.45 billion for his campaign and GOP national committees, $1 billion in 2024.)
Then, evidently fearing Trump could cause him more harm than he could inflict on Trump, Musk posted last Tuesday, “I regret some of the things I wrote about (Trump). They went too far.”
Trump responded that “it was very nice what he did” but it’s still not clear whether their old relationship has been restored. One signal is that the Trump administration is considering a reduced role for Musk’s SpaceX in the planned Golden Dome missile defense system.
Musk has caused chaos all by himself by eliminating or threatening to eliminate many federal agencies, but he did not save the government the $2 trillion he originally set as his goal or the $1 trillion he set later. As Musk left the government, DOGE reported its “estimated savings” at $175 billion. But fact-checkers at CNN said DOGE has published documentation for only half that figure—and that DOGE reports have consistently been overstated or simply wrong.
Trump triggered more chaos by federalizing 4,000 National Guardsmen and deploying 700 Active Duty US Marines to Los Angeles, scene of disorders triggered by the arrest of non-violent, non-criminal immigrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Trump’s action was illegal because it is a governor’s responsibility to activate the National Guard in the absence of the president’s invoking the Insurrection Act and also a violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Law that forbids the use of federal armed forces for domestic law enforcement.
Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said that Los Angeles police agencies, fully trained in riot control, were entirely capable of handling the unrest, which claimed no lives but did involve assaults on police officers and significant property damage.
Newsom and Bass accused Trump of “attacking our people” for political gain and said Trump’s actions had inflamed the situation. California sued the federal government and won an order from a district judge halting Trump’s deployments, but it was reversed on appeal.
The Governor said “Democracy is under assault before our very eyes… Well beyond his stated intent to go after violent and serious criminals, his agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.” Newsom, possibly a candidate for president in 2028, likely has helped his own prospects by fighting Trump.
At the time of protests over the murder of George Floyd during Trump’s first term—which was much more violent than the LA disorders, with 25 persons killed, 2,000 police injured and $2 billion in property damage—Trump said that he couldn’t federalize or mobilize National Guard units because only state governors can do so.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the government would “liberate” Los Angeles from its elected Democrats in a press conference at which California US Senator Alex Padilla was thrown to the ground and handcuffed when he tried to ask Noem a question. Noem falsely said he did not identify himself as a Senator.
Polls show mixed reactions to Trump’s actions: CNN found he’s moved from -21 to +1 on immigration. A CBS poll showed 58% approve of his deportation efforts. But according to CBS, 56% disapprove of how he’s conducting deportation policy and a YouGov poll showed that only 39% approve of his overall approach to deportations.
Apparently reacting to complaints from farmers, hotels and restaurant owners—all employers of immigrant workers—Trump abruptly ordered ICE not to conduct raids at such businesses. It’s not clear how that will affect ICE’s aggressive pursuit of undocumented workers. Oh, but never mind. The ban on raiding farms, hotels and restaurants was quickly unbanned a day or two later.
In other outrages, Trump has
Health
- Revoked a Biden requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril.
- His Environmental Protection Agency announced it would cancel limits on greenhouse gases from power plants and weaken restrictions on other hazardous emissions, including mercury, lead and arsenic.
- He also continued his cancellation of US and global health initiatives, costing millions of lives, US world leadership in biomedical research and causing US scientists to seek positions in other countries.
- In addition to drastic earlier cuts of $9.5 billion at NIH, plus $2.6 billion in cuts to NIH contractors (mainly universities and research centers), Trump is proposing an additional 40% cut to NIH, affecting cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and neurological research and its $258 million HIV vaccine program. Also, a $766 million program to develop vaccines to prevent flu pandemics.
- The Centers for Disease Control’s budget is being cut from $9.2 billion to 4.2 billion, reducing its chronic disease prevention and mental health programs.
- Some of the CDC programs are being shifted to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr’s newly created Agency for a Healthy America, but with drastically reduced funding.
- Health Secretary Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunizations—all experienced experts in vaccines—and appointed eight new members, several of whom have no vaccine experience or are vaccine skeptics.
- On the global health front, besides Musk’s elimination of the USAID agency, terminating 5,800 programs providing life-saving medicines, food and sanitation to millions of people—and ending decades of building good will for the United States—the administration is terminating US participation in GAVI, the world vaccine alliance, potentially leading to 500,000 deaths a year and increasing measles exposure in the US.
Trump has justified the global cuts, saying “American health must come first”—even though his administration is slashing US health programs, too.
Military
- Trump hijacked the military for a lavish parade on his 79th birthday. It was “dual-purposed” as a celebration to observe the 250th anniversary of the US Army. The Army had planned a far less elaborate celebration, but Trump ordered a spectacle. Trump opponents staged “No Kings Day of Defiance” marches and demonstrations in more than 2,100 cities and towns to protest authoritarianism and deportations, with upwards of 4-5 million participating across the country.
- Trump’s military parade included 6,600 soldiers, 150 military vehicles and over 50 aircraft and cost between $25 million and $45 million, including $16 million for road repairs necessary to accommodate M1 Abrams tanks. Members of both parties condemned the expenditure.
- Trump has been lavishly praising (and using) the Armed Forces lately but he revealed his true opinion in his first term when he called US military personnel “suckers” and “losers” and refused to be photographed with wounded service persons, according to his then chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly. And Trump is reducing personnel at the Veterans Administration by 80,000 or 15%, causing delays in seeing doctors and slow down disability claims processing.
Education
Trump continued his war on Harvard, canceling the visas of 7,000 foreign students, a quarter of the school’s total enrollment and students who usually paying full price, a major source of funding. The move has so far been blocked by a district judge.
This action is diametrically opposite Trump’s 2024 statement that he wanted foreign college (even junior college) graduates to receive green cards with their diplomas.
One of Trump’s major charges against Harvard is that it tolerates antisemitism. But as Peter Baker revealed in The New York Times, Trump has appointed at least three people with histories of antisemitism, has disparaged Jews in private, and hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for antisemite Kanye West, who brought along white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
But then, such justifications or their contradictions are nothing new.
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