Letters from an American - January 22, 2025

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

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January 22nd, 2025. Mark Caputo of Axios reported today that Trump's decision to pardon or commute the sentences of all the January 6th rioters convicted of crimes for that day's events, including those who attacked police officers, was a spur of the moment decision by Trump, apparently designed to get the issue behind him quickly. Trump just said, f*** it, release them all, an advisor recalled. Rather than putting the issue behind him, Trump's new administration is already mired

in controversy over it. NBC News profiled the men who threw Nazi salutes, posted that they intended to start a civil war, vowed there will be blood, and called for the lynching of democratic lawmakers. These men, who attacked police with bear spray, flag poles, and a metal whip, and choked officers with their bare hands are now

back on the streets. That means they are also headed home to their communities. Jackson Reffett, who reported his father Guy's participation in the January 6th riot and was a key witness against him, told reporters he fears for his life now that his father is free. Jackson recorded his father's threat against talking to the authorities. If you turn me in, you're a traitor, his father said, and traitors get shot. I'm honestly flabbergasted that we've gotten to this point,

Jackson told CNN. I'm terrified. I don't know what I'm going to do. The country's largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has spoken out against the pardons, as has the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, law and order back the blue? What happened to that Republican Party? What happened on January 6, 2021 is a stain on Mr. Trump's legacy, it wrote. By setting free the cop beaters, the president adds another. Mark Jacob of Stop the Presses commented, Republicans, the jailbreak party.

One of the pardoned individuals is already back in prison on a gun charge, illustrating, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance said, why Trump should have evaluated prior criminal history, behavior in prison, and risk of dangerousness to the community following release. Now, she said, we all pay the price for him using the pardon power as a political reward. On social media, Heather Thomas wrote, So when all was said and done, the only country that opened its prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens was us. NBC's Kyle Griffin reported that Stuart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, who was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 18 years in prison, met with

lawmakers on Capitol Hill this afternoon. For the past two days, the new Trump administration has been demonstrating that it is far easier to break things than it is to build them. In his determination to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, measures, Trump has shut down all federal government DEI offices and has put all federal employees working in such programs on leave, telling agencies to plan for layoffs. He reached back to the American past to root out all possible traces of DEI, calling it illegal discrimination in the federal government. Trump revoked a

series of executive orders from various presidents designed to address inequities among American populations. Dramatically, he reached all the way back to executive order 11-246, signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in September 1965 to stop discriminatory practices in hiring in the federal government and in the businesses of those who were awarded federal contracts. Johnson put forward Executive Order 11246 shortly after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to protect minority voting, and a year after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, both designed to level the playing field in the United States between white Americans, black Americans, and Americans of color. In an even more dramatic

working of American history though, the Trump administration has frozen all civil rights cases currently being handled by the Department of Justice and has ordered Trump's new supervisor of the Civil Rights Division, Kathleen Wolf, to make sure that none of the civil rights attorneys file any new complaints or other legal documents. Congress created the Department of Justice in 1870 to prosecute civil rights cases. Today, E Erica L. Green reported for the New York Times that Trump's team has threatened federal employees with adverse consequences if they refuse to turn in colleagues who defy orders

to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts from their agencies. Civil rights lawyer, Sherrilyn Ifill, commented, "'Can't wait until these guys have to define in court a DEI hire and DEI employees. Trump's team has told the staff at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and the National Institutes of Health, or NIH,

to stop issuing health advisories, scientific reports, and updates to their websites and social media posts. Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond, and Rachel Rubin of The Washington Post report that the CDC was expected this week to publish reports on the avian influenza virus, which has shut down Georgia's poultry industry. Trump has also set out to make his mark on the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump yesterday removed the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant, Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, and ordered the Coast Guard to surge cutters, aircraft, boats, and personnel to waters around Florida and borders with Mexico, and to the maritime border around Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S. territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to stop migrants. The Service is already covering these areas as well as it can. Last August, the Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lundey, told the Brookings Institution that the service was short of personnel and ships. As Josh Funk reported in

the Associated Press, Trump also fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, responsible for keeping the nation's transportation system safe. He also fired all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, mandated by Congress after the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, to review safety in airports and airlines. Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez, and Kara Scannell of CNN reported that Trump has pushed aside senior Department of Justice lawyers in the National Security Division, prosecutors who work on international affairs, and lawyers in the criminal division, all divisions that were involved in the prosecutions involving Trump. Trump has also suspended all funding disbursements

for projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, laws that invested billions of dollars in construction of clean energy manufacturing and the repair of roads, bridges, ports, and so on, primarily in Republican-dominated states. Breaking things is easy, but it is harder to build them. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly teased the idea that he had a secret plan to end Russia's war against Ukraine in a day. This morning, in a social media post, he revealed it. He warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would put high levels of taxes, tariffs,

and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries. In fact, President Barack Obama and then Secretary of State John Kerry hit Russia with sanctions after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine, and under President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the U.S. and its allies have maintained biting sanctions against Russia. At the same time, Russia's trade with the U has fallen to lows that echo those of the period immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. Making a ridiculous post about tariffs on truth social was his

secret plan to end the war in 24 hours, wrote editor Ron Filipkowski of Midas News. What a ridiculous clown show, idiocracy. Yesterday, Trump held an event with Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman of OpenAI, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi San of SoftBank to roll out a $500 billion investment

in artificial intelligence, although Jahan Jones of MSNBC explained that it's not clear how much of that investment was already in place. In any case, Trump's sidekick Elon Musk promptly threw water on the announcement, posting on X, they don't actually have the money. He added, Softbank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority. Musk has his own plan for developing AI tools and is in a legal battle with open AI. Altman retorted, this is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies, but in your new role, I hope you'll mostly put America first." As Jones noted, the fight took the shine off Trump's big

announcement. As for turning his orders into reality, Trump has turned that responsibility over to others. Mark Berman and Jeremy Roebuck of the Washington Post noted today that Trump's executive orders covered a wide range of topics and then simply told the incoming attorney general to handle them. A key theme of Trump's campaign was his accusations that Biden was using the Justice Department against Trump and his loyalists. Berman and Robach point out that Trump appears to want the Justice Department to act as both investigator and enforcer of his personal and policy wishes. This morning, Merrill Kornfeld and Patrick Svitek of the Washington Post, with the help of researcher Alec Dent, reported on Trump's first meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson,

a Republican of Louisiana, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota. Trump frequently repeated, promises made, promises kept, but offered no guidance for how he foresees getting his agenda through Congress, where the Republicans have tiny margins. Both Johnson and Thune pointed out that it will be difficult to get majorities behind some of his plans. According to Kornfield and Svitek, Trump stressed that he doesn't care how his agenda becomes law, just that it must. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.