While we’re waiting (with bated breath) for the midterm election results, Donald Trump and his minions are perpetrating more outrages (or planning to). Among them:
Gifts for Putin
Trump is “considering” (though it looks like a done deal) lifting sanctions on Russia’s flagship investment fund, which Trump aides say will advance the cause of peace, but will actually do more to strengthen Putin’s war machine, which is inflicting grievous damage on Ukraine.
It’s part of an earlier deal whereby Trump is buying Russian diesel fuel—ignoring sanctions established earlier this year by the law championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham—that will give Russia somewhere between $4.5 billion and $7 billion. Trump claimed that deal would lower sky-high diesel prices for the US, but all the experts say it won’t. So it is just a gift to Putin— of what will turn into blood money.
Other gifts to Putin include more waivers of Graham provisions—elimination of all tariffs on Russian goods and on major buyers of Russian oil and gas and a lifting of sanctions on Russian banks.
Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine—including a stoppage and then a slowdown of Elon Musk’s Starshield early warning system for 10 days this month—is not a top issue in the campaign, but the fact is that 61% of Americans sympathize with Ukraine and only 2% with Russia. An October poll in the Economist magazine showed that 45% of Americans think that Trump sides with Russia, compared to 16% who believe he sides with Ukraine. The remainder are unsure or think he sides with neither. Will this issue influence voters?
Clearly, US voters care more about the war in Iran, which 76% of Americans say has not been worth the cost in American lives or prices voters have to pay for gasoline, food, fertilizer and other commodities delivered by diesel-trucks. Trump’s approval scores on the Iran war range from 26% to 33%.
Incidentally, while Trump claims the US is more respected than ever by foreigners, a Pew survey of citizens of 24 countries found that a median of just 34% think that Trump will do the right thing in foreign affairs. He got his highest marks in Israel, Hungary and India, and his lowest in Mexico, Sweden, Germany and Canada.
Revenge
The Trump Justice Department is again (for the third time) going after the former FBI director James Comey, this time for allegedly transmitting national defense information in an October 2016 leak.
His first indictment, in September 2025, was for allegedly making false statements to Congress. A judge threw it out because the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed. DOJ is appealing.
The second, in April 2026, alleged he’d threatened to kill the president when he shared a picture of seashells on a beach reading “86 47,” interpreted by the prosecution as meaning “kill” No. 47 in gang patois. Comey said it meant “remove” the 47th president and was covered by the First Amendment, but he took the picture down. The case is still pending.
Trump’s DOJ is now going after Comey for allegedly violating the Espionage Act by leaking national defense information to a NY Times reports.
Trump’s animus against Comey arises from the Comey-led FBI’s investigation of alleged collusion between Trump and Russia to aid Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Comey is one of a long list of people that Trump has had his administration either investigate or prosecute. A current investigation aims to prove that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) committed immigration fraud; Trump seeks to strip her of her citizenship and deport her to Somalia. It’s highly unusual for the government to initiate a criminal investigation of a Member of Congress this close to an election. Trump wrote in January that Omar and her friends from Somalia should be in jail or sent back to the African country, which he described in derogatory terms.
Others who have been threatened with prosecution include Jack Smith, who won indictments against Trump for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, invasion of the US Capitol and for storing highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump has called him a “criminal.”
He has also gone after Fulton County (GA) district attorney Fani Willis, who investigated Trump for trying to reverse his 2020 defeat in her state. Another victim of his “revenge tour” was New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud case against Trump’s company. A mortgage fraud case against her was dismissed.
Six Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Mark Kelly (AZ) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (MI), were called before a grand jury after they appeared in a video saying that US military personnel should not obey illegal orders. Trump said they ought to be executed. The grand jury declined to indict them.
Cassidy Hutchinson is another of Trump’s targets. She testified against Trump before the Jan. 6 investigating committee and also testified before a grand jury as DOJ investigated whether she lied to Congress. The grand jury declined to indict her.
The Trump administration also charged that former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had lied about overruns in the renovation of the Fed’s headquarters. The project was first estimated to cost $1.9 billion but ended up at $2.46 billion. Powell’s allies said the real reason for the probe was Trump’s displeasure at Powell’s refusal to obey Trump’s demands to lower interest rates. This March, Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia quashed the DOJ’s subpoenas, ruling that the government had offered no evidence that Powell committed any crime.
Dirty Donald
Dedicated as he is to a “drill, baby, drill” energy policy and a “burn, baby, burn” environmental policy—and following the lead of oil and gas companies which donated heavily to his 2024 presidential campaign—Trump has done almost everything possible to undo regulations and reporting standards dating back to the 1970s and the subsequent “green” movement.
This February, the Environmental Protection Agency rescinded its 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health, the legal foundation for most federal climate regulation. At the same time, it repealed emission standards for cars, trucks and engines.
In September, it repealed most of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, including the 90% carbon capture mandate for coal-fired plants and gas turbines. A supplemental proposal would rescind all remaining limits on power plant greenhouse gases.
In February , the EPA weakened standards for emissions of mercury and air toxins for coal- and oil-fired power plants.
The administration’s stated aim is to bolster US energy dominance, lower electric bills and ease the path for new AI data centers. Critics argue that the changes weaken public health protections.
Inasmuch as there is a dispute over the effects of deregulation, monitoring the results would seem to be called for. But the administration has reduced federal reporting programs across the board, including the greenhouse gas reporting program for 46 of 47 source categories. In some cases, reporting deadlines have been delayed, but not yet eliminated.
On February 25, 2026, EPA moved the reporting deadline for 2025 emissions data from March 31, 2026 to October 30, 2026. EPA has since pushed it back again, to March 10, 2027.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ended its 45-year practice of tracking billion-dollar weather disasters. About 400 experts were fired who were working on the National Climate Assessment and the US Global Change Research program created by Congress in 1990 to coordinate federal climate and global change research across a dozen agencies.
The latest NOAA budget request proposes terminating the Coral Reef Conservation Program and regional ocean acidification studies. The same budget request proposal called for eliminating NOAA’s research division, which runs more than a dozen ocean monitoring programs.
NOAA decommissioned key sea ice datasets used to monitor Arctic climate impacts, as part of cost-cutting. NOAA has warned more such moves are coming. And the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program data was also slated for discontinuation.
As the Trump administration has closed down government reporting, independent groups have calculated the health costs of Trump & Co.’s policies. The Environmental Protection Network says rolling back a dozen key rules erases $254 billion in annual health and environmental benefits, against only $39 billion in savings. Health groups expect higher rates of lung and cardiovascular disease. The American Lung Association called the administration’s plans a “tragedy for health.”
An AP analysis of EPA assessments and peer-reviewed research found the targeted rules currently prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year. The Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA staff, estimates the rollbacks could cause nearly 200,000 additional premature deaths over 25 years and more than 10,000 extra asthma attacks per day.
EPA itself has estimated that the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plant pollution prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks each year.
Health At Risk
Besides health losses from environmental changes, there are also losses from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s encouragement of the anti-vaccine movement. And budget cuts for health agencies also will lead to more illness and deaths.
Measles, a disease thought to have been eliminated in the US, is back, owing to declines in vaccinations that began after COVID, but have been encouraged by RFK. The CDC reported 4,410 cases as of October 15. That is 78% above the 2025 total of 2,289.
So far, the US death toll from measles stands at two or four, depending on the counter, but officials in Pennsylvania, which is claiming four deaths, estimate that three people will die per 1,000 measles cases, so thousands of cases imply more deaths ahead.
A Yale study of cuts to health agencies estimated they would lead to 51,000 preventable deaths a year in the US.
Globally, elimination of USAID by Elon Musk’s DOGE could lead to over 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including over 4.5 million children under five.
All of the foregoing, and more — especially his rampant corruption — should be sufficient reason for voters to punish Trump and his captive party at the polls next week.
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