Dear Republicans

The polarization of politics keeps us from talking about the values we share and the things that we as humans have in common with each other. I mean, “make America great again”, who wouldn’t want that? It’s very vague though, so what does it mean? Was America ever great to begin with? What are the things that made it great? What are the things that made it not great? These are questions left unanswered and in many cases subjective. The most well defined of the bunch is the what makes America not great bit, where it’s placed countless blame on others. The actual things that are happening as President Trump and Mr. Musk enact their agendas is probably not what you voted for.

Mr. Musk is treating the economy and government like a startup, with the idea that they will massively succeed if they pull on the right levers. What success looks like to a billionaire is not what success looks like to most other people who want to feed their families and have a decent life. Both Mr. Musk and President Trump also have largely failed in businesses. Tesla is seen as highly successful but it makes most of its revenue from massive subsidies granted by the government. In fact, they just cut off medicaid completely and added a line item to buy more armored Tesla’s for the government, all of which is being controlled by Elon Musk. There has been no bid, no process, just adjustments to spreadsheets that control the budget of what DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is supposedly making more transparent and maintainable. Donald Trump’s businesses have been failures for a long time. Don’t take my word for it though, here are some other people who know far better than I do about the going ons right now.

The economic agenda by President Trump is anything but a solid plan:

You can tell this is a well-thought-out and detailed trade policy strategy because they keep rewriting it every couple of days.

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— Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 (@josephpolitano.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 10:36 AM

The cancellation of education contracts that collect data nation wide from schools that help plan how effective specific educational programs are. It’s the opposite of efficient.

NEW: DOGE is behind the abrupt cancellation of $900 million in contracts overseen by the Institute of Education Sciences, a Department of Education division responsible for much of what we know about the state of U.S. schools.

By @jodiscohen.bsky.social & @jsmithrichards.bsky.social

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— ProPublica (@propublica.org) February 10, 2025 at 9:31 PM

CFPB is being demolished.

President Trump campaigned on lowering costs. But he’s letting billionaire Elon Musk and Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

If they succeed, CEOs on Wall Street will once again be free to cheat you out of your savings.

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) February 10, 2025 at 6:30 AM

Our actual foreign allies are making plans without the US because we’re no longer reliable. It’s also worth noting that as the US imposes tariffs on others, they will impose tariffs in retaliation but also are free to not impose tariffs on other nations making the US a less desirable trade partner than anyone else except for goods that remain cheaper or they can’t get anywhere else. We have no competitive advantage, even if we produce goods at a cheaper rate.

An optimistic take on Europe‘s growth prospects, by Isabelle Mateos y Lago. economic-research.bnpparibas.com/html/en-US/F...

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— Christian Odendahl (@codendahl.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 11:52 AM

The attacks on Democracy are undeniable.

“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now. There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.” —Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of University of California, Berkeley law school.

Time to stand up:

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— E.J. Dionne (@ejdionne.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 4:39 PM

The concentration camps are being setup and this is just the start, they’re already proposing sending “undesirable” citizens here too.

Glad to see that the judge acted so quickly on this. Based on NYT reports that the Trump Admin hasn't revealed the identities of who has been sent to Gitmo so far, it may be functionally impossible for people on the island to obtain a meaningful review.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/u…

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— Owen Barcala (@obarcala.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 8:19 AM

Didn’t they claim they needed more transparency in government?

They’re trying to shield DOGE from FOIA requests.

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— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:56 PM

The concerns of Mr. Musk’s agenda are real, but not enough to make a difference—yet:

Senator Cory Booker says "what has surprised me is the complicity of my Republican colleagues" with Elon Musk's DOGE

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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 9:02 PM

The American Bar Association has just called upon every attorney, regardless of their political views, to join them & stand up for the rule of law & at minimum insist that our government "follow the law.

Every lawyer has an ethical responsibility to do so.

www.americanbar.org/news/abanews…

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— P. Andrew Torrez (@andrewtorrez.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 12:53 PM

They are incompetent, something they really don’t want you to know since their entire persona is based on the idea that they have super hero like competence and are infallible. Even an executive of The Apprentice apologizes about creating the persona that Donald Trump is competent, saying that he was the only CEO that was willing to do a reality TV show because the rest were too busy running their businesses.

Missed this a little while ago — a federal judge has delayed the deferred resignation deadline again. If you'll recall, at a hearing Thursday he moved it to today. There is currently no timetable for a new deadline as he reviews the case.

ICYMI my piece explaining the ‘Fork in the Road’:

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 3:11 PM

Ok but here’s the thing—he’s always been against science.

People haven’t been paying attention.

I’ve been dying on this hill for years—Elon has never cared about scientific discovery, other people, or philanthropy.

It’s always been about his ego.

www.vanityfair.com/news/story/d…

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— Shannon Stirone (@shannonstirone.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:31 PM

Mr. Musk and the DOGE consultants use AI to feed our private data into public systems to look for fraud and abuse. The problem is that they are LLMs which are notoriously unreliable and make things up. They even suggest that the renaming of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America is a political satire piece that is not real! Also of course that private data is becoming public data…

Elon Musk’s DOGE turns to AI to accelerate its destructive incompetence pivot-to-ai.com/2025/02/10/e...

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— Amy Castor 🥄 (@amycastor.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:14 PM

Their policies are definitely good for the economy, right?

Trump is picking another fight with Canada. This time, he's threatening steel and aluminum tariffs.

Meanwhile, as he continues to flood the zone domestically, judges keep getting in Trump’s way.

This is going to lead to one of the biggest first tests of his administration – and of U.S. democracy:

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— Rachel Gilmore (@rachelgilmore.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:37 PM

Publications like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal that have traditionally been more favorable of Trump’s policies have started to take a critical stance, because if they tank the dollar then it doesn’t matter how rich they get, it will always be worse.

Financial Times Editorial Board: "As well as vandalising the machinery of government, however, this supposed efficiency drive appears to be being used as cover to bolster the power of the executive branch to drive through its priorities and neuter opposition." www.ft.com/content/f766...

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— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 12:34 PM

Removing our good faith and brand across the world will do us harm, ultimately.

America’s absence is China’s opportunity.

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— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:43 PM

They also don’t seem to care much about their actions and are repeatedly demonstrating their contempt to courts and willingness to ignore laws.

the tenor of this motion is not "felon/President Trump is ignoring the order entirely!

the tenor of this motion is “we’ve identified continued noncompliance on the part of felon/President Trump and we’ve seen enough bad faith that we want AUSAs to explain why they oughtn’t be in jail.”

e.g.

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— Dr. Lina Prince St. Cameron (@converselina.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:44 PM

Goodbye to any semblance of ethics that is out of line with whatever one man thinks is ethical.

President Donald Trump has fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency announced Monday. The small office is an independent agency responsible for setting policies on preventing conflicts of interest for federal employees.

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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) February 10, 2025 at 1:55 PM

Compassion too.

This is an absolute scandal.

Trump and Marco Rubio abandoned American workers and their families abroad, delaying waivers to provide for their safe return to the United States.

As these civil servants lost their possessions, housing, and money, Elon Musk was slandering them with bogus accusations.

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— Congressman Don Beyer (@beyer.house.gov) February 12, 2025 at 2:26 PM

Maybe they take care of their own?

This is literally all of Medicaid btw

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— Ryan Marino, MD (@ryanmarino.bsky.social) February 12, 2025 at 9:39 AM

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— Top 0.01% of all Todds (@toddadam.bsky.social) February 12, 2025 at 9:56 AM

And are far from narcissistic!

I could swear the Bible had something about this https://t.co/qxl5fKtRgH

— Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 (@JeremiahDJohns) February 10, 2025

Something something 1984…

Our case is fairly simple: OPM’s data is extraordinarily sensitive, OPM gave it to DOGE, and this violates the Privacy Act.

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— Electronic Frontier Foundation (@eff.org) February 12, 2025 at 11:00 AM

Free-speech is dead, long lived free-speech. The constant removal of books in public and school libraries that share different view points and perspectives in history and gender. It’s how they shape a narrative to control the future, creating a foundation that looks obvious and justified¹. Even though I disagree with the EO (executive order), they could have chosen to roll it out instead of removing the content that already exists—ceasing to fund and write about future efforts. Instead, our tax dollars are going towards editing people out of the government entirely. It’s affected every department, even NASA which has promoted DEI efforts for decades, before DEI has even been a thing. They’re using word list to scan what kinds of words are unacceptable and removing or modifying the contents of the documents in an automated fashion. Never mind the fact that many of these keywords can be used in multiple context.

1. EXCLUSIVE

Today, the NSA is planning a “Big Delete” of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including “privilege,” “bias,” and “inclusion,” a NSA source tells Popular Information.

The massive purge is creating chaos, taking down “mission-related” work

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— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 6:15 AM

The man that bought twitter to increase free-speech has done anything but that.

Musk's censorship algorithm on Twitter reduced our audience by about 95% since he bought it.

So we moved over to blue sky.

Help us build another great following right here where the skies are clear and the water is fine ;-) Please do Follow Retweet & repeat

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— AltYellostoneNatPar (@altyellonatpark.org) February 10, 2025 at 8:40 PM

President Trump also ordered the removal of data from various public scientific sources like the CDC and are keeping statistics about the bird flu quiet. This is public taxpayer money paying for these studies which they are removing because it doesn’t fit into a narrative they can spin. It’s digital book burning.

More than 1,000 pages of national, regional and state health data was removed from the CDC and FDA websites on Jan. 31 as part of a federal government data purge. Healthcare organizations say this threatens the quality of healthcare delivery across the nation. www.upi.com/Health_News/...

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— Ian Weissman, DO (@drianweissman.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 2:48 PM

They halt government funding for our sciences and research departments, which will have huge consequences to remain competitive as knowledge leaders. Why would anyone abroad want to come to the US to do research even on an H1B visa? There is zero incentive for top talent to come to the US.

Penn State has halted submission and *acceptance* of NIH grants pending the resolution of the overhead rate cut.

This lost time will never be recovered. The economic cost to Pennsylvania is enormous and the cost to humanity immeasurable.

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— Carl T. Bergstrom (@carlbergstrom.com) February 10, 2025 at 8:31 PM

We should talk more about where the US gov't gets huge value for taxpayer money. Take NIH study section: they get 25-30 expert PhD consultants to each spend 40-50 hours scrutinizing grant apps (incl 2 solid days of group discussion) and they pay them ~half of DC minimum hourly wage. And no coffee

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— Shaun Mahony (@shaunmahony.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 3:32 PM

They’ve really made scientists angry so even the dorks have gone marching!

Get in dorks, we're going protesting!

STAND UP FOR SCIENCE WITH US ON MARCH 7TH, 2025 WASHINGTON DC AND EVERY STATE CAPITOL

Because science is for everyone!

Find us at www.standupforscience2025.org

#standupforscience2025 #scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

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— Colette Delawalla (@cdelawalla.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 3:57 PM

Elon Musk³ knew exactly what he was doing when he gave that Sieg Heil, he is the worlds richest man with two-plus decades of experience dealing with the media. Normalizing the suffering of others is unacceptable. The open season on being a Nazi is apparently here.

A swastika t-shirt is the only item on the Yeezy website.

Powered by Shopify.

It’s not the first time Shopify has powered stores selling items with Swastikas. I’ve reached out to them about this before, and they kept powering the stores.

The only thing they changed, eventually, was their rules.

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— Rachel Gilmore (@rachelgilmore.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:50 PM

Another correction notice from DOJ tonight, this time about the employment status of the DOGE staffer who resigned after being linked to racist online posts by WSJ. DOJ says his status meant he was subject to stricter ethics rules at the time he was employed

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— Zoe Tillman (@zoetillman.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 6:27 PM

I can’t believe the Supreme Court said the president was above the law and now the president is acting like he’s above the law.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 6:17 PM

President Trump offers protection to anyone loyal to the cause. Not to mention the pardoning of the January 6th rioters that killed police officers. Say what you will about the others, but he pardoned actual murderers!

This is — literally — unheard of in federal prosecutions.

We can’t prosecute him because he’s a candidate for office? Wow.

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— Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (@whitehouse.senate.gov) February 10, 2025 at 7:07 PM

The opportunities for our kids, particularly minorities or women, are being removed wholesale.

The Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) has removed from its website all information on current funding opportunities and directs visitors not to finalize any applications.

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— Bruno J. Navarro (@brunojnavarro.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 5:45 AM

The rich get richer and the abuse is both obvious and rampant.

I WILL FIGHT INFLATION BY CAUSING A SEVERE RECESSION

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— Raffi Melkonian (@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 7:54 AM

Sen. Elizabeth Warren addresses Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) shutdown protest:

“For every American who doesn’t want some weird Elon Musk suck-up searching through your personal private data, this is your fight.”

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— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 2:03 PM

The 2018 steel tariffs just called to remind you that steel is produced by a tiny sliver of the economy, but used as an input by a much broader swathe of manufacturers. https://buff.ly/42ReSrr

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— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 3:57 PM

The fact that FIVE former Secretaries of Treasury felt there is a need to speak out like this should be terrifying for anyone that uses money. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/o...

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— Navin Pokala (@navinpokala.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 7:30 AM

They definitely are not racist.

SCOOP: The military has started making deliberate efforts to scale back the recruiting of Black Americans. www.military.com/daily-news/2...

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— Steve Beynon (@stevenbeynon.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 2:15 PM

The actual scary thing about reshaping the military with only white men is that there will be no push back against the harm against anyone who looks different. No additional view points advocating for the well-being of others when violence is not necessary. This is a power grab and a way to brain-wash youth into servants.

Erasing the trans-gender community and destroying peoples lives who have devoted much to the country.

SCOOP: Texas State Law Library has removed public access to their LGBT Law name/gender marker change information page.

This is especially concerning as there are already limited resources for options trans people from Texas have for changing documents.

Texas ignores gender change court orders.

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— mady castigan ✨ read my pin 👀🧵 (@madycast.com) February 10, 2025 at 5:04 PM

The car & driver in question was NOT CONFUSED. This happened right in front of my husband and I. The car SPED UP, CAME CLOSER to the crowd, was hit by protesters trying to get the car to stop. The car then proceeded to speed ahead and hit this poor girl. There is no confusion in this situation.

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— Mrs.Smith 💚 (@smeebee.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 4:49 PM

>>> dnc

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— Lesley Carhart (@hacks4pancakes.com) February 10, 2025 at 4:37 PM

The Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, is embarrassing and can’t communicate with the masses. Communicate your vision clearly to both internal and external stakeholders. Chuck Schumer and the democratic party have failed at this and it shows, no wonder people don’t want to vote for the Democratic party when you have this!!!

Former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan slams Chuck Schumer's embarrassing protest, saying "that's not the kind of visual we need...Schumer's brand is not good."

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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:50 PM

The exasperation is real!

democrats: here are the rules to play in the game

republicans: fuck the rules we’re taking what we want

dems: quickly reading through the rules to see if they can do that uhh

— Elle (@elleisanisland.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:25 PM

Unfortunately the list keeps growing and I need to stop somewhere. The power grab is real, the elected and unelected members of the GOP are destroying the foundations of the US and reshaping it to suit their purposes. Even Mitch McConnell is angry about it. They do not care about you, me, or anyone that stands in their way. They do what they want and being told no us an unacceptable outcome and when their plans fail, they blame others for not executing well enough. They’re persistent and treat the world like one big zero-sum game where they need to be on top. The attacks on science are not new but they have grown to be more normal and persistent².

DEI is actually a good thing that does not harm white people nor does it put unqualified people in jobs. It often puts piles of resumes or applicants on top of a pile for them to be considered first, instead of passed over. Because there are generally fewer applicants, it gives them a chance to be noticed. Depending on the system, if there is over-representation of a minority it can reshuffle the pile so that they’re included in the same stack. The US has seen DEI as a strength. DEI has given the US a competitive advantage where we get to repeatedly challenge the status quo and more rapidly iterate because we have a tighter feedback loop. Destroying these policies and making the US an undesirable place for anyone that’s not white is going to ruin us in so many ways it will be impossible to recover from. After WW2 the US was in a unique position as the only non-ruined mainland with the only atomic arsenal making it possible to create allies and friendships that would last and we’re in a real danger of losing those forever. Attacking the US saying it has woke agendas is not helpful, particularly when woke is left undefined and intentionally vague—left as a word to invoke a negative connotation. What does it actually mean? This is why I believe we share more values with each other than we think. Essentially, we all want what’s best for those around us and our families.