Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal!

An unhinged convicted felon, who shamelessly acts on his amoral, white supremacist and fascist beliefs, is now the de facto dictator of the world's most powerful nuclear armed superpower

by Scott Harris and Anna Manzo

Women’s March 2017 (Liz Lemon)

As we celebrated Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s long struggle fighting racism, poverty and militarism on Jan. 20, it was truly an obscene coincidence on our moral calendar to have Donald Trump’s second inauguration as the nation’s 47^th president take place on that same date.

As Trump’s second administration takes shape over the next 100 days, it will be important to remind ourselves on a daily basis, that his presidency IS NOT NORMAL — no matter how our corporate media twists and contorts itself to normalize the formation of an authoritarian and exceptionally cruel, white supremacist regime.

This column is a compilation of the second Trump administration’s illegal, unethical and unconstitutional vindictive actions and policies. We will continue to update this list for the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. We’re not striving to cover every monstrous action but to cover those with the most impact.

WARNING SIGNS FROM DONALD TRUMP’S FIRST TERM

• It's Not Normal for an individual to broadly denigrate Mexicans as rapists and criminals as he announces his campaign bid for president of the world's major superpower and continue to do so in following years.

• It's Not Normal to have a president who doesn't believe in science and who, through his reckless policies based on conspiracy theories, needlessly condemned over 100,000 Americans to die during the first year of the COVID pandemic.

• It's Not Normal to have a president that advocates policies that eliminate reproductive rights, denying health care to women who have pregnancy complications, resulting in their deaths, disproportionately impacting the lives of poor women of color.

• It's Not Normal that a U.S. president has adopted an explicitly white supremacist, racist agenda with the goal of eliminating civil rights legislation such as federal affirmative action and "critical race theory" in public schools, as he and his party target communities of color with voter suppression, and racial gerrymandering as well as embrace racial profiling and police violence.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. president to be investigated for colluding with Russia to win an election and then to be impeached for holding back military aid to Ukraine in that nation’s war against Russia, unless the Ukrainian president announces falsely that his administration opened an investigation into Joe Biden.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. president to face 37 criminal charges for refusing to return numerous classified documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago and then to escape prosecution and trial after a federal judge that he appointed dismisses the case. The special prosecutor dropped his appeal after Trump’s re-election. In the past, a number of other government officials have been prosecuted, fined and/or served prison time for mishandling classified documents.

• It's Not Normal for a president to have lied over 30,000 documented times in his first four-year term.

• It's Not Normal for a president and his legal team to know he lost his re-election, yet they filed more than 60 lawsuits claiming vote fraud that were dismissed by all courts including the Supreme Court; attempted Electoral College certifications by fake electors in three states; attempted to have Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Clark claim massive vote fraud; pressured Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the vote, while some 147 Republican lawmakers voted to overturn the election results; and instigated a Capitol insurrection to prevent House certification of the vote.

• It’s Not Normal for a former president to face two federal and two state criminal trials and to rely on numerous appeals and delay tactics, hoping to win the election so the cases can be dismissed and he can then punish the prosecutors and judges overseeing his cases.

• It’s Not Normal for the Supreme Court to rule that a president has “immunity from investigation and prosecution while conducting official acts” — which critics say undermines democracy.

• It's Not Normal to have a presidential candidate who quotes Adolf Hitler, the world’s most evil war criminal and mass murderer, as he demonizes “illegal immigrants,” scapegoating them for all of America’s problems during his third presidential campaign.

• It's Not Normal for such a presidential candidate to campaign with the promise of retribution against "the enemy within" who are “poisoning the blood of this country.

• It's Not Normal for a presidential candidate who promises to impose tariffs upon Canada and Mexico if they don't control illegal aliens and fentanyl entry over U.S. borders to fail to understand that his voters wanted him to reduce the price of everyday costs, as tariff costs are passed on to consumers, who will suffer the consequences of his decision.

• It's Not Normal for a president-elect to declare that he intends to take over other sovereign lands and nations by force if needed, naming the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada as targets of his criminal imperialist plan … and then have sycophant Republican legislators introduce a bill, “Make Greenland Great Again.”

• It's Not Normal for any head of state in the world to pledge to "Drill, Baby, Drill" to extract and burn exponentially more lethal fossil fuels in the world in the midst of a global climate crisis emergency that every year claims more lives, creates millions of climate refugees and irreversibly destabilizes our planet’s ability to sustain life for human development on planet Earth.

• It's Not Normal to have a president accuse the free press of being the “enemy of the people” and later threatening journalists with life in prison and having the FCC revoke media broadcast licenses.

• It's Not Normal to see the billionaire owners of major media outlets and online platforms bow down to a would-be authoritarian president by censoring their content to please the tyrant and donate millions of dollars to him in a spineless act of anticipatory obedience.

• It's Not Normal for a president to nominate unqualified and dangerous people to Cabinet positions who are accused of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, promoting QAnon conspiracy theories and lethal anti-science views that have killed children, simply because he likes the way they look on Fox News TV.

• It's Not Normal for a U.S. president to surround himself with billionaires as advisors, the richest men in the world and rely on them for advice on which social safety net programs to cut from the budget, condemning the nation's most vulnerable population — the elderly, young children, the sick and handicapped — to a life of destitution and poverty.

•It's Not Normal for a president-elect to launch a speculative crypto coin to enrich himself and his family just days before taking office, while vowing to create a national strategic reserve of Bitcoin and to deregulate the industry so that Bitcoin will be a “superpower of the world.”

• It’s Not Normal for congressional Republicans to pledge to fast-track a new bill called The SAVE Act, which would require all Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or one of a few other citizenship documents every time they register or re-register to vote. Voters of color, voters who change their names (most notably, married women), and younger voters would be most significantly affected.

• It's Not Normal for an outgoing president to be forced to pardon members of his own family because his successor threatened them with political “show trial” prosecutions.

DAY ONE OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It's Not Normal that authoritarian leaders and dictators from around the world, as well as billionaires would be invited to attend a U.S. presidential inaugural. Historically, no head of state has ever made an official visit to a U.S. inauguration.

• It's Not Normal that the Proud Boys, a right-wing, armed fascist militia group is welcomed to parade in the streets of Washington, D.C. on the day of a presidential inauguration.

• It's Not Normal to have a president tell the country during his inaugural address that he was saved by God, because God had chosen him to make America great again.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, part of the United Nations, where 194 countries work together to fight the world’s toughest public health problems: COVID-19, Zika, HIV, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer; and have proven to eradicate smallpox and reduce worldwide polio cases by 99%.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to target the “Green New Deal” by ending clean energy-related disbursements with an executive order.

• It’s Not Normal for the richest man in the world, appointed by the U.S. president to a federal advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency, a department which has not been legally created by Congress, to give a Nazi salute twice at a presidential inaugural parade.

• It's Not Normal for a president on his first day in office to pardon or commute the sentences of more than 1,500 violent treasonous insurrectionists who attacked Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them patriots and political prisoners who were “held hostage,” giving a green light to these domestic terrorists to engage in future political violence, acting as the president’s private army.

• It’s Not Normal for a president issue an executive order to end birthright citizenship for infants born in the United States to parents who are not citizens — a constitutional right that has been enshrined in the 14^th Amendment since 1868 — and have confidence that five Supreme Court justices will side with him.

• It's Not Normal for a president to launch a mass deportation of millions of immigrants without due process, in a plan that inflicts as much cruelty, humiliation and suffering as possible.

• It’s Not Normal for approximately 80 lawsuits to be filed against the executive branch of the U.S. government from Day One of its administration. Here’s a running Litigation Tracker by Security.org, which is tracking the president’s executive orders and their numerous violations of law, leading to lawsuits.

WEEK ONE OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for a president to sign an executive order that prevents the NIH from meeting, communicating and attending conferences on medical research until projects are reviewed for DEI and gender-related ideology

• It’s Not Normal for any presidential administration, to seek to stamp out federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs — which are often misinterpreted as quota hiring programs based on race, ethnicity or gender rather than on qualifications— and then to call on government employees to snitch on any colleagues that continue to follow such policies. Most Americans “are fine” with DEI corporate policies, according to polls.

• It’s Not Normal for attorneys general of 19 states, to threaten Costco to end all unlawful discrimination imposed by the company through diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) policies after Costco’s board doubled down on keeping their DEI policies in place because “it is good for business.” (If your state attorney general is one of those who signed this letter, please call their office to let them know what you think.)

• It’s Not Normal for a president’s administration officials to fire 300 nuclear staff, not realizing they oversee the country’s weapons stockpile, and then have difficulty rehiring them because they lost access to their federal email accounts.

• It’s Not Normal that a president would revoke a predecessor’s provision on a new technology — artificial intelligence — to reduce the risks it poses to consumers, workers and national security. In line with the Defense Production Act, the order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government before the systems were online for the public. U.S. lawmakers have not passed legislation setting such guardrails for AI development.

• It’s Not Normal that a president would withdraw security clearance from his predecessor, Joe Biden, and security protections for former chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as his former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and revoke the security detail and security clearance for Gen. Mark Milley, the latter military officials whom Iran threatened to assassinate after they carried out their president’s January 2020 order to assassinate Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. It’s clear that Trump has now removed their security, seeking petty revenge that could end in their injury or death, because these men criticized him after he left the White House.

• It's Not Normal that a president fired 18 non-partisan inspectors general in agencies across the federal government, unless this new administration was determined to engage in corrupt practices that they did not want to be exposed or prosecuted for.

• It’s Not Normal for the president to attempt to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers/civil servants illegally and unconstitutionally — without giving Congress 30 days’ notice and a reason for firing — and which his office does not have the authority to fire.

• It’s Not Normal that a U.S. president would eliminate all federal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, with national corporations to following suit, and as well as revoking LBJ's 1965 executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. DEI executive orders also targeted staff rules at intelligence agencies, in the military and across civilian departments, barring employee resource groups and the celebration of 11 cultural awareness events including Black History Month.

• It’s Not Normal for any presidential administration, to seek to stamp out federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs — which are often misinterpreted as quota hiring programs based on race, ethnicity or gender rather than on qualifications— and then to call on government employees to snitch on any colleagues that continue to follow such policies. Most Americans “are fine” with DEI corporate policies.

• It’s Not Normal that a president would radically end the executive branch’s recognition that transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people exist.

• It’s Not Normal that during a time of an increasing number of natural disasters, wildfires, hurricanes, droughts and tornadoes fueled by the climate crisis, a president has threatened to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and withdraw the critical help it provides to hundreds of thousands of Americans who are victims of these disasters every year.

• It’s Not Normal that this president has enlisted an unelected, vetted or congressionally confirmed oligarch to take over and eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, created and funded by Congress, which oversees foreign aid and life-saving humanitarian aid to countries around the world. This shutdown is also affecting the most vulnerable, including progress in HIV care.

• It’s Not Normal for USAID-funded clinical trials to be abruptly halted. It’s dangerous to the health of thousands of trial participants.

WEEK TWO OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It's Not Normal to have a president persecute the LGBTQ community, trans children and their parents for working with physicians to help their children overcome gender dysphoria and prevent self-harm.

• It’s not Normal for the leader of the world’s major superpower, in his first press briefing, to blame DEI programs, a euphemism referencing women and people of color, for the collision of a commercial jet and a military helicopter before an official investigation has even begun.

• It’s Not Normal to have a president say the U.S. will 'take over' Gaza and relocate its people, in what critics decry as ethnic cleansing, and which the majority of Americans and allied nations object to.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to call for a review of the United Nations, casting uncertainty on the leadership role of the United States in the global body.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to withdraw the United States from the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and to stop funding United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to blatantly violate the U.S. Constitution by suspending the distribution of all congressionally authorized funding for most federal programs.

• It’s Not Normal for any administration to begin mass firings across government unilaterally, without the approval of Congress to shrink or overhaul federal agencies, in violation of separation of powers. Such a violation occurs when one branch of government interferes with the functions of another branch. The U.S. Constitution's separation of powers is intended to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful.

•It's Not Normal for the president to offer a buyout to all federal workers, promising pay through Sept. 30, which violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, preventing government from promising or spending money in excess of what Congress has made available.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to use executive orders reinstating members of the military who were terminated or forced to separate because of vaccination mandates; establishing a process to develop an "American Iron Dome," or a comprehensive missile defense shield around the U.S.; eliminating "gender radicalism" within the military; and eliminating DEI services and offices within the military.

• It’s Not Normal that a president has begun the mass firing, without due process, of prosecutors and all FBI agents and Department of Justice employees who ever worked on investigations into his federal criminal indictments as well as Jan. 6 insurrections, making the nation less safe.

•It’s Not Normal for a president to float the idea of sending U.S. "repeat offenders" to foreign prisons as a cost-saving measure.

• It’s Not Normal that Trump has authorized his billionaire pal and unelected “co-president” Elon Musk to take control of the U.S. Treasury’s payment system computers that regulates all federal funds including Social Security and Medicare, with access to the sensitive personal data of every Americans. Musk’s lackeys—including senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration). Historians are referring to these actions as a coup.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to repeatedly muse publicly about running for a third term to fellow House Republicans, especially after a such a bill has been introduced in the House to amend the Constitution allowing a president to have a third term.

WEEK THREE OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for the NFL to practice anticipatory obedience by changing the stenciling on the edge of the end zone during Super Bowl LIX from “End Racism” to “Choose Love,” for the first time in five seasons.

• It’s Not Normal for the president to offer “buyouts” to CIA agents to be replaced by political appointees.

• It’s Not Normal for the richest man in the world, an unelected oligarch to be in charge of shrinking government, control data and — according to one official closely watching the billionaire’s DOGE — replace “the human workforce with machines.”

• It’s Not Normal for Democratic lawmakers to be locked out of government buildings.

• It’s Not Normal for a vice president and an unelected, white supremacist oligarch running the dismantling of government agencies to question whether judges have have jurisdiction over a president’s "legitimate power."

• It’s Not Normal for the Senate to confirm the unqualified Russell T. Vought — an architect of the ultraconservative Project 2025 policy agenda and who believes Americans have been living in a post-Constitutional America — to lead the Office of Management and Budget. According to the New York Times, he believes Americans have grown accustomed to being ruled by an unelected and unaccountable “fourth branch” of government. This “fourth branch” stands above and apart from the separation of powers, imposing its own agenda and defending its own distinct interests, and it is “the woke and weaponized bureaucracy,” that he has promised to dismantle. Vought took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as acting director and the DOGE team has accessed the system.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to take over The John F. Kennedy Center, ousting its bipartisan Board of Trustees and appointing himself as chairman. The center is now facing a mass exodus of artists, board members and scheduled performances. It’s not normal for a president to erase dissent with a war on the arts — historically, authoritarians and dictators have done so as a means of control over what they perceive is a dangerous form of resistance, influencing public perception.

• It’s Not Normal for an administration to order the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to halt at least two studies sponsored by NOAA-sponsored studies, and scrub DEI policies.

• It’s Not Normal for the FBI to turn in names of 5,000 employees to DOJ related to Jan. 6 prosecutions.

• It’s Not Normal for the DOJ enforcer of a political witch hunt against FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 prosecutions to also have a secret: He, too, investigated Jan. 6.

• It’s Not Normal for lawsuits needing to be filed by two groups of anonymous FBI agents, resulting in a federal judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily blocking the Justice Department from disclosing information about those agents to any other federal entity or outside group until further arguments are heard in the case.

• It's Not Normal for a nation to elect a tyrannical, erratic and unstable leader with the power to launch the world's most destructive nuclear weapons arsenal in human history.

• It’s Not Normal for the world’s richest man to try to “buy an election” in Wisconsin, by funding a Republican candidate for the state Supreme Court with $2.6 million in PAC campaign funds. In January 2025, Elon Musk’s Tesla electric car company sued Wisconsin for its law not allowing car manufacturers to own dealerships in the state.

WEEK FOUR OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for the White House to not release visitor logs during a president’s term.

• It’s Not Normal for an unqualified conspiracy theorist whacko who criticizes vaccines to be confirmed as the nation’s secretary of Health and Human Services.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to claim there is “widespread fraud in the government” and not present any evidence.

• It’s Not Normal for a head of state to ignore a judge’s order to unfreeze federal spending in the form of grants and loans. Early childhood education, pollution reduction and HIV prevention research has remained tied up even after a Jan. 31 order blocked a planned halt on federal spending. A temporary restraining order issued also blocks the administration from cutting billions of dollars in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

• It’s Not Normal for a judge to order the executive branch to unfreeze funds for USAID that have already been appropriated by Congress. Another judge’s order also halt the firings of Consumer Federal Protection Bureau staff.

• It’s Not Normal for a judge to need to extend a temporary order to block an unelected billionaire from accessing the Department of Treasury’s payment systems that track, disburse and collect trillions each year.

• It’s Not Normal for a vice president to state publicly that some rulings are illegal: “judges aren’t allowed to control executive’s legitimate power,” when all branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial — are constitutionally imbued with equal power to act as checks and balances.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to ban a news agency from an Air Force One press pool for a presidential trip and other press briefings indefinitely just because their media outlet didn’t rename the “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” in news reports.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to take over The John F. Kennedy Center, ousting its bipartisan Board of Trustees and appointing himself as chairman. The center is now facing a mass exodus of artists, board members, and scheduled performances. It’s not normal for a president to erase dissent with a war on the arts as historically, authoritarians and dictators have done so as a means of control for what they perceive is a dangerous form of resistance.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. attorney general to unveil a lawsuit against top New York officials, alleging that a state law is unconstitutional and infringing upon the federal government’s ability to curb illegal immigration.

• It’s Not Normal for an unqualified former Fox News host to be appointed U.S. secretary of defense to then tell our European allies in NATO the U.S. cannot guarantee the security of Europe from Russia because it has to focus on its own borders and the threat of China in his first public speech at an international gathering.

• It’s Not Normal for an Republican senator to rebuke the U.S. secretary of defense— for a “rookie mistake" of publicly stating it was “unrealistic" for Ukraine to gain back its pre-war borders in its ongoing war with Russia. (But considering the secretary of defense is a former weekend Fox News Host with a checkered past, whose only military experience is as a National Guard officer, such a diplomatic blunder would not be unusual.)

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. vice president to be elected with a very scant career except for mentorship under anti-democracy billionaire Peter Thiel and other tech billionaires such as Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin has been espousing monarchy by “deleting government,” under what he calls “RAGE-Retire All Government Employees.” Recently, the vice president then met with Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party and later scolded Germany and EU leaders for shunning far-right parties in their countries.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. president to post on his social media account a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” — in essence declaring he believes he is above the law.

• It’s Not Normal for the head of state of a democracy to dismantle government’s public integrity guardrails by firing leaders of offices responsible for ethics and whistleblower complaints

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. Department of Justice Department to dismiss charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, for absolutely no other purpose than as a “quid pro quo” to blackmail the unpopular mayor of America’s largest city to do the bidding of Donald Trump and expedite the rounding up of perhaps tens of thousands of NYC’s undocumented immigrants.

It was made clear that if Adams refused to cooperate with ICE to assist with mass deportations, the charges would be reinstated. Because this move blatantly undermined the rule of law, seven federal attorneys, including Danielle Sassoon, the Trump-appointed conservative interim head of the Southern District of New York, resigned in protest.

Some two dozen lawyers in the Justice Department’s public integrity division were all threatened with termination unless one of them signed the order to dismiss charges against Mayor Adams. One veteran prosecutor agreed to sign the dismissal of charges in order to protect his co-workers from all being fired, or being forced to resign.

In the end, this corrupt deal makes Mayor Adams Trump's puppet. He'll do anything and everything Trump wants in order to avoid having the corruption charges refiled against him. New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul has the power to fire Adams, whose integrity is undeniably compromised, threatening to use his power as mayor to undermine democracy.

In her first week on the job, it’s evident that Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi lied in her Senate confirmation hearing when she pledged over and over again that she wouldn’t “play politics” to weaponize the DOJ on behalf of her boss Donald Trump. She’s doing exactly that, with far worse sure to come over the next four years.

• It’s Not Normal for the State Department’s procurement forecast to remove a mention of Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. in relation to a planned $400 million armored EV purchase after reports emerged about it on Feb. 12. The December version of the document had included an “Armored Tesla” budget item that would span five years and start in 2025; however, the document was later revised to remove Tesla’s name. This followed reports of the company’s moniker on the procurement document from Drop Site News and the New York Times.

• It’s Not Normal for a president and his unelected, unvetted and unconfirmed co-president, in their hunt for "fraud, waste and abuse" in the federal government, to falsely imply millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security benefits without any evidence. Part of the confusion comes from Social Security's software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birth dates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. The news organization WIRED first reported on the agency's use of COBOL, a programming language which is more than 60 years old.

• It’s Not Normal for Homeland Security and FEMA to revoke $80M in funding authorized by Congress from NYC’s bank account for migrant housing.

• It’s Not Normal for Homeland Security, amid mass firings and a supposed hunt for government waste, to spend $200 million in taxpayer funds on anti-immigrant ads that repeatedly praise the president:

WEEK FIVE OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for the Republican House to approve a budget resolution in support of a $4 trillion tax cut for billionaires and multinational corporations, that would increase the $36 trillion federal deficit due to Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the pandemic. Elon Musk, Trump’s DOGE experts hopes to cover the shortfall by cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. Most of the $880 billion in spending cuts would be from social safety net programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, which provides health care and food assistance for 80 million low-income people, such as seniors, working families with children and the disabled. As Alex Lawson of Social Security Works says, “And the cruelty of taking this away is only multiplied massively … when you realize why they’re doing it. They’re going to kill people. They’re going to harm people, seniors, people with disabilities, and yes, millions of children who will become sicker. All so that they can give tax handouts to billionaires.”

• It’s Not Normal for the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who is netting a combined $20 billion in US government contracts and subsidies for his companies X, xAI, Neuralink, Starlink, and the Boring Company, in addition to Tesla and SpaceX:

- to be tasked with seeking out waste, fraud and abuse in agencies which have oversight over his companies — and then firing employees at those agencies:
- FDA, which oversees his company, Neuralink
- FAA, which had fined his company, SpaceX
- USAID, which investigated Starlink
- CFPB, which oversees Tesla’s financing arm and a potential X payment platform
- and a myriad of others

and

- to justify the “public transparency” of his actions by using X accounts for each department. However, the posts do not provide data or even the numbers of people who have been fired or the numbers of dollars that they are freezing

and

- to fire bird flu researchers at the USDA and then scramble to rehire those that were accidentally fired

and

- to jubilantly wield a chainsaw gifted to him onstage by “chainsaw” Argentinian dictator, Javier Milei, at the Conservative Political Action Committee CPAC, annual conference to symbolically express what he is intending to do to our federal government—and our constitutional republic.

• It’s Not Normal for a private citizen, even if he is the richest man in the world, to receive a government security detail, with U.S. marshals deputizing his personal bodyguards.

• It’s Not Normal for an unelected, unvetted and unconfirmed “co-president” to send a weekend mass email to government workers demanding they provide five bullets of what they accomplished last week or risk losing their job. The submission deadline was set for Monday, 11:59 p.m. Feb. 24, 2025. Confusion ensued with key agency officials — such as the FBI or State Department — telling workers to ignore the edict, and other to comply or to pause responses. Lawsuits are now underway.

• It’s Not Normal for the Elon Musk, owner of X, a major social media platform, who is deeply enmeshed with the Trump administration, to — reportedly — pressure one of the largest ad agencies to give X business or risk government reprisal. The Wall Street Journal alleges that CEO Linda Yaccarino and her lieutenants have been pressing Interpublic Group, one of the world's biggest ad agencies, to get its clients to spend more money on X. Hanging over IPG's head: a proposed deal to sell itself to its rival Omnicom, which may need regulatory approval in the U.S.

• It’s Not Normal for the White House to claim that “Elon Musk is not an employee or leader of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE” but only a senior adviser, and that Amy Gleason is the acting director pushing agencies to fire employees, cancel contracts and make other budget cuts. However, “Elon Musk is clearly running the show,” says Bernie Sanders:

•It’s Not Normal for the president to:

- openly lie about Ukraine, that President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “dictator” who doesn’t hold elections and that Ukraine started the war on Russia. Even more abnormal was holding peace talks with Saudi Arabia and Russia that did not include the heads of states of Ukraine and Europe, the nations that are threatened by Russian authoritarian expansionism.

- sign an executive order claiming that ONLY the president and attorney general can speak for “what the law is,” for the executive office, sparking a constitutional crisis. The order covers all federal employees and agencies, including independent agencies operating under the executive branch of the US government. Historically, independent agencies exist outside the executive branch and are largely free of presidential control. However, Article II does not expressly state that the president or any other person in the executive branch has the power to interpret laws. The article states that the president is required to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

- sign an executive order to curtail the autonomy of independent regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission. A regulatory expert said the directive will likely be challenged in court, as Congress has largely shielded some of the affected agencies from involvement by the White House.

- signal he wants to privatize the US Postal Service, in violation of the Constitution, by firing the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department.

- pause the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws bribery of foreign government officials by U.S. companies and executives. The U.S. led the charge against global corruption. Now the U.S. president is clearing the way for unbridled corruption.

- illegally fire the special counsel, an independent watchdog and whistleblower advocate.

- illegally fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CQ Brown Jr., with over 40 years of military experience, because the unqualified Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth believes the US military should be rid of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

• It’s Not Normal for lawmakers to file legislation/ draft articles of impeachment against judges who stand in Trump’s way.

• It’s Not Normal for a D.C. U.S. attorney to initiate an “Operation Whirlwind” to investigate Democrats over alleged threats made against Elon Musk. Analysts say Trump-appointed Ed Martin’s ‘Operation Whirlwind,’ which targets statements by Democrats and others about Elon Musk, justices and government workers, is meant to stifle criticism and suppress free speech.

• It’s Not Normal for a D.C. U.S. attorney to pressure a veteran federal prosecutor to conduct a criminal investigation over Biden-era climate spending that she said lacked “sufficient evidence” and did not merit a grand jury. When she refused, Ed Martin then sought her written letter to freeze bank assets, but such an action did not fit “probable cause” to do so. She then resigned.

• It’s Not Normal for Congress to propose cutting $880 billion from Medicaid, which covers costs of nursing home care for over 1.5 million frail, elderly Americans — to finance a tax cut for billionaires.

• It’s Not Normal for the Washington Post to cancel an ad from groups calling for Trump to fire Musk The newspaper told Common Cause, an advocacy group, that it was pulling its special ad, which would have covered the front and back pages of some Feb. 18 editions.

• It’s Not Normal for the Associated Press to be banned from presidential press briefings, especially for something as petty as the AP’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as Trump demands.

• It’s Not Normal for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to issue a sweeping and unprecedented letter, declaring race-based scholarships, cultural centers and graduation ceremonies illegal as well as all race-conscious student programming, resources and financial aid. The office threatened to investigate and rescind federal funding for any institution that does not comply within 14 days.

• It’s Not Normal for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to dismiss 6 gender identity discrimination cases.

• It’s Not Normal for the Education Department to threaten to cut funding to schools that promote diversity.

• It’s Not Normal for Congress to cede power of the purse to the executive office, but GOP lawmakers are now begging the Trump team for state funds to be reinstated.

• It’s Not Normal for thousands of jobs to be cut from health agencies such as the CDC and the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as the National Institutes of Health, while critical research grants in remain on hold.

• It’s Not Normal for the president and secretary of defense to fire top leaders at the Pentagon who have supported “diversity, inclusion and equity,” claiming the move will better fortify a lethal fighting force. Among the firings were a dozen senior military leaders, including Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations; and Gen. Jim Slife, vice chief of the Air Force.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. secretary of defense to fire the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAGS), who are guardrails for commanders. This role is particularly important should a military leader, or even the commander-in-chief, consider wading into the gray areas of military law, like Trump's previous musings about deploying active-duty troops to American cities during the protests over George Floyd’s killing by police officers.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. Justice Department to delete a database tracking federal police misconduct. A new executive order ends National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, which Trump proposed creating in 2020.

• It's Not Normal for the U.S. attorney general to create a "Weaponization Working Group" within the Department of Justice. A former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York called it both unnecessary and highly problematic due to her proposed appointees.

• It’s Not Normal for Trump to order nearly 100 asylum-seekers — including Iranian Christians who risk retribution if returned to Iran — to be held in a sweltering camp with "fenced cages," on the border of a Panamanian jungle called the Darien Gap which links Panama to Colombia. The camp was built years ago as a stopover point for migrants coming north from Colombia through the Darién jungle and into Panama, a harrowing part of the journey north to the United States.

• It’s Not Normal for a major US news agency, The Associated Press to sue the president’s administration over barred access, especially ignoring an executive order as trivial as referring to the “Gulf of America” in their news reports. The lawsuit claims White House blocking journalists from press events is unconstitutional effort to control speech.

• It’s Not Normal for the president to hand pick the White House press pool, a brazen attack on the First Amendment which guarantees equal access to the news media. For more than a century, the White House Correspondents’ Association, a private organization made up of some of the top journalists in the country, has been in charge of the press pool, deciding which journalists are allowed into the limited-capacity rooms on a rotating basis and distributing their reports.

• It’s Not Normal for the president, at a White House event, to confront a governor’s refusal to enforce his executive order on transgender athletes and to state,“Well, I am — we are the federal law,” then threaten revocation of federal funding if she didn’t fall in line.

WEEK SIX OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for a Cabinet meeting to be publicly televised engaging in a prayer session led by the HUD secretary, thanking God for Donald Trump.

• It’s Not Normal for the White House to share on social media, a photo of a faux Time magazine-style cover of their president dressed as a king, and declare: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to join Russia in a vote against a UN resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, creating an unprecedented shift where the U.S. is at odds with its longtime European allies and instead aligned with the aggressor in the war on the three-year anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

• It’s Not Normal for Trump to strong arm the Ukrainian president in live TV negotiations to end Ukraine’s war with Russia, demanding access to Ukraine’s valuable mineral resources, but with no guarantees for security against Russia. In what many critics referred to as a bitter exchange in the White House, ending in one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history, Trump warned Zelensky he is gambling with WW III.

• It’s Not Normal for the Russian media Tass to attend White House meeting for top-level negotiations, while The Associated Press and Reuters are barred.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. press to continually ignore Trump’s lies, but perhaps Trump is simply not “educable.” France’s Emmanuel Macron and the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer corrected Trump’s lies about the amount of aid supplied by Europe compared to the U.S. They both corrected Trump’s lie that European aid to Ukraine was a loan that would be paid back by Ukraine.

• It’s Not Normal for media to “obey in advance” as Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos sent out a notice on Wednesday that he would only publish editorials defending “personal liberties and free markets.” The opinion page chief resigned.

• It’s Not Normal for the FBI to return classified documents seized to a suspect. Trump repeatedly argued that he had a legal right to the 300 classified documents taken from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, despite their classification. Files that investigators said contained classified material were among the thousands of items taken in the search, and they had formed the central evidence in a criminal case charging Trump with illegally taking them when he left office after his first term and blocking the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to defy a federal court order for the State Department and USAID to release $2 billion in funds for work that has been completed, and then to rely on the Supreme Court to pause the order.

• It’s Not Normal for a unelected federal bureaucrat to have such a clear conflict of interest running DOGE, with the Federal Aviation Administration abruptly switching a $2.4 billion contract for its communications systems from Verizon to Elon Musk’s Starlink in what seems to be a last-minute no-bid contract award.

• It’s Not Normal for DOGE, run by an unelected federal bureaucrat, to gain access to HUD’s confidential records on housing discrimination, medical details — even domestic violence.

• It’s Not Normal for 21 U.S. DOGE Service staffers to resign and publicly state: “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations. However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United States DOGE Service. … We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.” The joint resignation letter was addressed to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and uploaded to a webpage called WetheBuilders.org.

• It’s Not Normal for a child to die of a measles, the first U.S. fatality in 10 years, as the outbreak now spreads to nine states. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Health and Human Services secretary, falsely said at a Cabinet meeting that measles outbreaks happen regularly. He had campaigned for the presidency and has repeatedly and falsely linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism — a claim thoroughly debunked by scientific research.

• It’s Not Normal for hundreds of federal NOAA employees – including weather forecasters and metereologists – to be fired in DOGE cuts

• It’s Not Normal for the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, to repeal the “endangerment finding,” an official determination announced in 2009 that affirmed what the fossil fuel industry had known for decades: that emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause planetary heating and threaten public health. "Lee Zeldin is willing to go so far as to break established law to pay back the corporate executives and polluters who spent millions to get Donald Trump elected," said one climate leader.

Climate advocates said Wednesday that the Trump administration will be abdicating its "clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution" if it moves forward with repealing the 16-year-old scientific finding that has underpinned the federal government's actions to protect people and the planet from fossil fuel emissions.

• It’s Not Normal for a president’s executive order to shift the financial burden of climate change onto individuals by removing a critically important calculation: the “social cost of carbon,” which is used for things like creating fuel economy standards and regulating the amount of pollution allowed to flow from utilities’ smokestacks. Without this measure, energy and environmental regulations meant to address climate change and could have the long-term effect of shifting costs from polluting industries directly onto Americans as the costs of climate change rise.

• It’s Not Normal for the SEC to halt fraud prosecution of a Chinese national who sent Trump millions in crypto. In March 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun with manipulating the market. After Trump was elected, Sun invested $30 million into the President Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto scheme. Now a federal judge has granted him a stay in the SEC’s investigation.

• It’s Not Normal for a president and his inner circle to work to aid “misogynist” social influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, facing charges in Romania of rape and sex trafficking, allowing them to be released to the U.S. because the Trump family and allies have known the pair as supporters for a long time.

WEEK SEVEN OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for presidential advisors and foreign celebrities to openly give a Nazi salute at the end of their speeches.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to abruptly stop weapons aid to Ukraine. After the disastrous Friday, Feb. 28 meeting between Trump, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office, U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine came to an abrupt halt March 9 at 6 p.m. Although additional Ukraine funding has not been allocated since Trump took office, some funding authorized by former President Joe Biden had yet to be sent. As of Dec. 19, $5.2 billion of that funding was still left, according to the Defense Department.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. to suspend the flow of military intelligence and sharing commercial satellite imagery to Ukraine, which has aided the Russian advance along a critical part of the front, weakening the negotiating position of President Volodymyr Zelensky and killing many Ukrainian soldiers in recent days, according to five senior Western and Ukrainian officials and military officers familiar with the situation. Russian missile attacks across Ukraine on March 7 reportedly left 21 civilians dead and scores injured, making it one of the deadliest days this year.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. president to want more than just a mineral deal to restart aid and intel to Ukraine. Trump wants the deal, which would give the United States a stake in Ukraine’s mineral resources, signed. But he also wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s willingness to make concessions, such as giving up territory to Russia, holding move to holding elections and possibly toward stepping down as his country’s leader.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. secretary of defense to order the Pentagon to stop offensive cyberoperations against Russia. The U.S. has, until now, been central in helping U.S. hospitals, infrastructure, cities and European nations’ communications systems fight back against ransomware originating in Russia — often in covert cyberoperations, but future cooperation could now be in jeopardy.

• It’s Not Normal for the Five Eyes spy alliance, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as well as Israeli and Saudi officials, to share less intelligence with the U.S. — fearing the identities of foreign assets could be shared with Moscow.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. president to question NATO allies' will for collective defense while casting doubt on U.S.' own treaty commitment

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. NATO ambassador to have zero diplomatic or military experience, especially such an erratic work history as Trump’s nominee Matthew Whittaker’s.

• It’s Not Normal for the Department of Homeland Security to begin performing polygraph tests on employees to find leakers to the media regarding Trump administration immigration operations.

• It’s Not Normal for the president to sign executive orders targeting career Justice Department officials and law firms which lawfully participated in cases against Trump. Now, a new executive order targets a large international law firm, Perkins Coie, with a sweeping directive that bans the federal government from hiring its lawyers, or from using contractors who work with the firm, except in limited circumstances. The order also bars Perkins Coie employees from entering federal buildings and suspends their security clearances.

• It’s Not Normal for half of the 90,000 IRS workers to be laid off just before tax season.

• It’s Not Normal for a proposal to cut 80,000 staff from Veterans Affairs, which serves 9 million veterans. More than 25 percent of the VA’s workforce are veterans.

• It’s Not Normal to cut 580 staffers at the already short-staffed National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Weather Service (NWS) by 20 percent, just before the tornado season and the following hurricane season at a time when climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of catastrophic storms with damage on the average of $1 billion each.

• It’s Not Normal for the National Weather Service (NWS) to suspend some weather balloon launches in Albany, New York, and Gray, Maine, due to a lack of Weather Forecast Office staffing. Other smaller stations are also experiencing staffing shortages; out of 100 stations, a shutdown of just one station has a ripple effect on the accuracy of weather forecasts. Weather balloons provide vital data for models, and are extremely useful during winter weather and severe weather to real-time forecast

• It’s Not Normal for the “Science Guy" Bill Nye to be targeted by MAGA for his CNN criticism when he suggested that Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was planning to replace weather satellites operated by NOAA with satellites operated by Musk’s Starlink company.

• It’s Not Normal for any government department or agency to make as many budget errors or get caught in as many lies as DOGE has.

• It’s Not Normal for a second child to die of measles, as the Health and Human Services’ top spokesperson resigns in a rift with RFK Jr. over the measles outbreak, an illness which the CDC had claimed was eradicated in 2000. The last measles death was in 2015.

• It’s Not Normal for Education Department staff cuts to leave student loan borrowers in the dark. The Education Department’s in-house team dedicated to helping borrowers with complaints concerning the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program no longer exists. Staffers at the Education Department tasked with fielding complaints from federal student loan holders and resolving their issues were let go in the recent job cuts. At least eight of the fired staffers were working on a total of nearly 800 student loan borrower complaint cases.

• It’s Not Normal for ICE to arrest a Columbia University pro-Palestinian student activist with a green card. He is being held in a Louisiana detention center.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to tweet that all federal funding will be halted to any college or university that allows “illegal protests.” But despite Columbia University’s bending over backward to appease right-wing, pro-Israel attacks, Trump has cut $400 million in federal grants to the university.

Other resources to keep you informed:

• New York Times’s Compilation of executive orders and their legality, and Tracking Trump administration lawsuit

• Just Security.org’s Litigation Tracker: Legal challenges to Trump Administration actions

• ProPublica’s Abortion investigative reporting

As we enter this now familiar dark era of chaos and repression, we'll leave you with these thoughts...

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an American historian and author who writes about fascism and authoritarian leaders said:

“The individuals and organizations that want to destroy our democracy and make us feel powerless have been at this game for a long time. But now far more of us are onto them. We are familiar with their scams, their distraction and deflection rhetoric, their conversion of violence into patriotism, and their bargains with unscrupulous religious leaders who praise them as instruments of divine will. And we can translate that experience into anti-authoritarian action.”