Hey, AmeriKKKa! It's Not Normal - Week 5
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
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.
Here’s our ongoing compilation of Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal.
(The following post is an update for Week 5 and includes incidents previously omitted.)
WARNING SIGNS (prior to Jan. 20, 2025):
• 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.
WEEK THREE
• It’s Not Normal for USAID-funded clinical trials to be abruptly halted. It’s dangerous to the health of thousands of trial participants.
• 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
• 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
• 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 5 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 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 democracies of Ukraine and Europe.
- claim that “Elon Musk is not an employee or leader of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE.” 'Elon Musk is clearly running the show': Bernie Sanders on DOGE leadership.
- 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 briefing, 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.