>>507437547Sure, Iraq was a disaster, but Congress declared that war. blame the CIA analysts and the bipartisan Congress that signed off on it. Libyans revolted against Gaddafi, Syrians rose up against Assad. The US provided limited support, but civil wars are ultimately made by domestic factions. Ruby Ridge happened in 1992 under George H.W. Bush, and Waco was already a standoff by 1993. Clinton inherited both messes, he didn’t invent them.
Trump has wielded executive orders to strip federal funding from Harvard, Columbia and Penn, launched DOJ investigations, threatened IRS action and publicly smeared students and faculty as “terrorist sympathisers.” He sanctioned Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss and WilmerHale revoking security clearances, cancelling government contracts, then grudgingly rescinded only after lawsuits and $40 million in forced pro bono commitments. He subjugated independent regulators, FEC, FCC, SEC and FTC to White House review, created “liaison offices” and summarily fired 17 inspectors-general without notice. He handed Elon Musk’s DOGE access to Treasury, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security systems. He froze nearly all federal grants, halted Pell Grants and student loans, capped NIH indirect costs at 15 per cent, and ordered the dismantling of the Department of Education and an end to birthright citizenship, each blocked by courts. He has bypassed executive guardrails to gut EPA rules, dismantle USAID’s aid missions, roll back ACA patient protections and drug-pricing reforms, and has sent mass intimidation emails to two million federal workers while purging probationary staff. He purged career DOJ prosecutors and DHS attorneys who refused to rubber-stamp his agenda, froze virtually all congressionally appropriated grants without a single appropriation bill in clear defiance of the Appropriations Clause, and publicly attacked and threatened “political” judges to intimidate the judiciary.That is unprecedented executive abuse.
