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.

WEEKS EIGHT AND NINE OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for the Office of Personnel Management’s chief spokesperson to repeatedly use her office for a side hustle: aspiring Instagram fashion influencer. While the OPM oversaw the layoffs of thousands of federal workers and pressed others to justify their positions, in at least a dozen videos filmed in her OPM office, political appointee McLaurine Pinover modeled her outfit choices for the day, while directing followers from her Instagram account to a website that could earn her commissions on clothing sales.

• It’s Not Normal that a federal judge in California would have to order half a dozen federal agencies to “immediately” reinstate probationary employees fired last month as part of the Trump administration’s effort to rapidly shrink the federal workforce, calling the effort a “sham.” The Office of Personnel Management unlawfully directed the agencies of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury to lay off thousands of probationary employees, who generally have been on the job for less than a year. A second federal judge in Maryland also had to order the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate thousands of federal employees terminated in recent weeks, after finding 18 federal agencies acted unlawfully in carrying out the mass firings.

• It’s Not Normal that the White House press secretary— in response to a judge’s order to reinstate thousands of federal employees —issued a statement falsely declaring: "A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch.” She said, in direct contradiction to the U.S. Constitution, “The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President's agenda. If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves.”

• It’s Not Normal that the Supreme Court Justice John Roberts to have to rebuke Trump’s call for a judge to be impeached for ruling against his administration. Just last week, federal judges raised the alarm about security concerns and urged public officials to use caution when they criticize court rulings.

• It’s Not Normal for high-level corruption to be so obvious. A day after a federal judge found that one of Elon Musk’s federal cost-cutting efforts has most likely been unconstitutional, Musk made the maximum allowable donation to members of Congress who have expressed support for impeaching judges who block Trump’s agenda. Efforts by Elon Musk and his team to permanently shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development likely violated the Constitution “in multiple ways” and robbed Congress of its authority to oversee the dissolution of an agency it created, a federal judge found. The ruling appeared to be the first time a judge has moved to rein in Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency directly. It was based on the finding that Musk has acted as a U.S. officer without having been properly appointed to that role by the president.

• It’s Not Normal for an administration to plan to cut 7,000 Social Security staffers from already skeletal staff. Staffing levels are at a 50-year low, while the number of beneficiaries increases by 10,000 people daily. The cuts will also chip away at the customer service that Social Security claimants need. On Wednesday, the agency suddenly stopped allowing claimants to change their direct deposit arrangements by phone. According to the Washington Post, the SSA and Musk’s DOGE team had considered ending phone service entirely, but abandoned the idea after the Post reported on the proposal. Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley has warned that DOGE's aggressive cuts could lead to a "system collapse" of Social Security within 30 to 90 days, resulting in potential interruptions of benefit payments.

• It's Not Normal for the Social Security Administration, the “third rail in politics” to not only face thousands of staffing cuts, but 47 field offices will also be cut. Beginning March 31, new claims or claim revisions must be filed in person as a “fraud” preventive measure, if the claimant is unable to file online. Critics have noted that this will likely cause undue hardship on frail elderly who are unable to use a computer to verify their identity, and may have to travel long distances if there is no longer a nearby office. Meanwhile, a leaked internal memo from the SSA, obtained by the Substack Popular Information, revealed that the agency could face longer processing times due to an additional 75,000-85,000 people visiting field offices every week to have their information processed if they cannot do it online.

Connecticut Rep. John Larson scolds the Republican party in Ways and Mean Committee on their last oversight:

• It’s Not Normal for 1,300 Department of Education employees to be fired, nearly half the department. A new lawsuit from Democratic attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia alleges mass layoffs at the Department of Education are gutting the agency as a way to implement an unlawful plan by President Donald Trump to dismantle the department. The states accuse the administration of “effectively nullifying” mandates by Congress that require the department to carry out certain functions.

• It’s Not Normal for thousands of remote employees ordered to return to work at the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters to find overflowing parking lots, long security lines and makeshift office spaces without chairs and other basic supplies. The FDA is the latest agency scrambling to meet the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate, part of a flurry of actions — including firings and buyouts — intended to radically shrink the federal workforce.

• It’s Not Normal for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US agency that monitors weather to cut another 1,000 jobs. Besides daily weather forecasts, the agency also monitors and warns about hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and tsunamis, manages the country’s fisheries, runs marine sanctuaries, provides navigation information to ships and observes changes in the climate and oceans. The agency also plays a role in warning about avalanches and space weather that could damage the electrical grid. It helps respond to disasters, including oil spills.

• It’s Not Normal for the FBI to move to criminally charge major climate groups who received Environmental Protection Agency grants under the Biden administration without evidence. The Trump administration wants to criminalize work on climate science and impacts. The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” Citibank says the FBI, EPA and the Treasury recommended that it freeze the accounts of climate grant recipients including several “nonprofit and state government agency accounts, such as the United Way, the Colorado Clean Energy Fund, and New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.”

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration’s FBI to freeze millions of dollars in federal funding meant for Habitat for Humanity and other organizations in Georgia and across the country without evidence of fraud. The frozen funds were part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a $27 billion initiative managed by the EPA. The program was designed to expand access to clean energy financing in underserved areas. A U.S. District Court judge demanded that the Justice Department present evidence to justify the funding freezes. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has argued that the program does not align with the agency’s current priorities and has raised concerns about fraud. However, Zeldin has not provided public evidence to support those concerns. Nonprofits routinely partner with the federal government on public service programs. Legal experts say it’s highly uncommon for an administration to freeze funds and initiate a criminal investigation without making specific allegations public.

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to lay off hundreds of scientists and researchers as part of drastic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The potential elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development would take a huge toll on public health and be a massive giveaway to polluting industries, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). These destructive actions are reportedly part of the Trump administration’s mass layoff strategy.

• It’s Not Normal for a volcano observatory’s credit cards to be frozen at a time when equipment in remote areas monitoring Alaska’s volcano near Anchorage, Mount Spurr. The volcano is dangerously close to erupting in the near future. The U.S. DOGE Service, led by Elon Musk, has moved to cancel the lease of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) office in Anchorage, which houses the observatory.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to air his grievances about the media, legal firms and lawyers, the FBI, judges and political opponents at a Department of Justice speech. Trump called for jailing his perceived opponents, and targeted former special counsel Jack Smith and referring to Jan. 6 rioters as “hostages.”

• It’s Not Normal for top Department of Justice officials to appear at hearings to advance Donald Trump’s goals in court. Last month, it was Emil Bove's New York appearance at the Adams hearing. This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi's chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, was in a Washington, D.C., courtroom defending Trump’s executive order that sought to take various actions against law firm Perkins Coie for its Democratic party-aligned work.

• It’s Not Normal for Trump to claim Biden's pardons for the Jan. 6 committee are 'void' because he used an autopen. Trump has argued that the committee members are guilty of unspecified “major crimes.”

• It’s Not Normal for an American president to inflict 50 percent tariffs on its northern neighbor, Canada saying the tariff “problem with” Canada will end when Canada agrees to become the 51st state.

• It’s Not Normal that the Canada’s new prime minister would have to respond to ‘crazy’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s endorsement of Donald Trump’s Canada as the “51st state”. Politicians on both sides of the aisle in Canada, including Trudeau, have disavowed Trump’s suggestion that the northern giant become an American state—even as Trump has said that agreeing to do so would bring an end to the tariffs. Even the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre—who, as an outspoken right-wing populist, is widely regarded as the country’s counterpart to Trump—was angered by the suggestion.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. president to question the border between Canada and the United States. The New York Times reported last week on some provocative recent conversations between Donald Trump and Canada’s then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, one of which included the American president reading “a long list of grievances.” Trump had told then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation. The border treaty Trump referred to was established in 1908 and finalized the international boundary between Canada, then a British dominion, and the United States.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to direct the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to "take back" the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed. U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama's military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. The officials explained that the likelihood of a U.S invasion depended on the level of cooperation shown by the Panamanian military. Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out use of military force to seize control of the vital U.S.-built waterway, as well as Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.

• It’s Not Normal for U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to begin replacing Judge Advocates General’s Corps by hiring his own personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy commander.

• It’s Not Normal for an appeals court to allow the Trump administration to enforce its ban on DEI programs at federal agencies and businesses with government contracts.

• It’s Not Normal for the Arlington National Cemetery to scrub information about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War from its website, part of a broader effort across the Defense Department to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from its website. Included are the “Notable Graves” of Gen. Colin L. Powell, the youngest and first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black person to sit on the high court, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

• It’s Not Normal that the Supreme Court may be about to hand the Trump administration its biggest weapon yet in the fight against DEIA—the possibility of criminal liability. The administration has often relied on federal funding as its weapon of choice in the fight against diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. That is a powerful tool: Every major educational institution receives large amounts of federal funds—and threatening those funds exerts considerable coercive pressure over schools. The same is true for health care facilities, many of which receive federal funds.

• It’s Not Normal that the U.S. State Department is proposing three tiers of 43 countries whose citizens may face restrictions on entering the United States.

• It’s Not Normal that Lebanese Brown University medical professor, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, who specializes in kidney transplants, has been deported without due process back to Lebanon, despite having a valid visa and a judge’s order halting her removal. Though the Trump administration did not initially detail their rationale for detaining Alawieh, Hilton Beckham, the assistant commissioner of public affairs for Customs and Border Protection, told HuffPost that “arriving aliens bear the burden of establishing admissibility to the United States.” Allegedly, she had attended the public funeral — attended by thousands — of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an airstrike.

• It’s Not Normal for Trump negotiators working to end the Russia-Ukraine war to have already discussed “dividing up (Ukraine’s) certain assets,” prior to Trump’s upcoming planned Trump discussion with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, without including Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to start up the Guantanamo Bay detention camp intended to house tens of thousands of migrants, but then after several weeks, halt the program and return some 80 migrants back to a Louisiana detention center after running up $16 million in costs. The Defense Department calculated the flight transportation costs to be $23,000 to $27,000 per detainee.

• It’s Not Normal for a 21st-century president to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the law was newly in effect due to what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, allowing him to deport any noncitizen he says is associated with the gang, without offering proof or even publicly identifying them. A federal judge ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody through the newly-invoked Alien Enemies Act. The deportees were then sent by plane to El Salvador’s megaprison in what appears to be in direct violation of a judge’s order.

• It’s Not Normal for independent, nongovernment-related organizations that are not part of the executive branch to be forcibly taken over by DOGE services. Alleged armed ‘U.S. marshals’ forcibly entered the Africa Development Foundation and then changed the locks. The FBI and the D.C. Metro Police forced out the staff of the independent, federally-funded U.S. Institute of Peace. The USIP has now sued President Trump and Musk’s cost-cutting operation to block what it said was an illegal “takeover by force” of the agency. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sharply questioned the decision to have “armed law enforcement at the ready” to resolve a dispute over the agency at a hearing hours after the lawsuit was filed. Certainly, she said, there were ways to resolve the matter “without using the force of guns and threats by DOGE" against American citizens and those who have served the country for years. “This conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigation, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies ... why?" she asked. "Just because DOGE is in a rush?”

• It’s Not Normal for billionaire U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to publicly state in a podcast with other billionaires discussing the growing public protests over DOGE’s “fraud and waste cost-cutting”: “Suppose that Social Security didn’t sent out checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, wouldn’t call in to complain. She would just think something got messed up. And it’ll arrive next month. Yeah. The fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining. Anybody who’s been in the payment and process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop the payments and listen. Yeah. Because the one who’s screaming is stealing!” What Lutnick ignores, is that nearly for 40 percent of Social Security recipients, Social Security is their only source of income.

• It’s Not Normal for acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Lee Dudek to threaten to close the agency after a judge ruled to block Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team from access to individuals’ personal data. A federal judge then reprimanded Social Lee Dudek for “making threats about shutting down operations” at the agency. Dudek reversed his stance after telling multiple media outlets a court order may force him to halt the agency’s operations, and he received “clarifying guidance” from the judge.

• It's Not Normal for the Social Security Administration to not only announce 7,000 staffing cuts, but to also shutter 47 field offices. Beginning March 31, new claims or transactions such as direct deposit must be filed in person as a “fraud” prevention measure, if the claimant is unable to prove his/her identity online via a “mysocialsecurity” account. Critics have noted that this will likely cause undue hardship on the elderly or handicapped who are unable to use a computer, and/or may have to travel long distances to transact claims at an SSA office. Additionally, a leaked internal memo from the SSA, obtained by the Substack “Popular Information,” revealed that the agency could face longer processing times due to an additional 75,000-85,000 people visiting field offices every week to have their transactions processed when they cannot do it online. Already, the Washington Post is claiming SSA is overwhelmed by long waits, large volume of calls, website crashes, in a sign Social Security is breaking down.

• It’s Not Normal for Elon Musk and the Trump administration to claim that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently accessing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of benefits, including Social Security, Medicaid and disability programs, as part of a Democratic scheme for votes, without any evidence or proof of their outrageous claim designed to undermine public confidence in the system.

• It’s Not Normal for a Department of Homeland Security to shut down internal watchdog agencies that advocated for immigrants. The three agencies had about 300 employees and investigated complaints that included detention conditions and delays in processing green-card and citizenship applications. The department has ordered a “reduction in force” for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, essentially eliminating them, alleging that the three offices “have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission.”

• It’s Not Normal for routine U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-ins to end up in an arrest and deportation proceedings of an individual — and then for relatives and law firms representing the client to realize that he has “totally disappeared” from ICE’s website. Arrest records are not public, and detainees can be transferred to far-flung jails anywhere in the United States. But family members, lawyers and the public can get information on an inmate’s whereabouts through an online database, contact with an official or direct phone communication with a detainee. But lawyers say the lack of information about the Venezuelan migrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act is nearly unprecedented.

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to invoke “state secrets privilege” to justify their refusal to give a federal judge any details about the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under Trump’s Invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, used in previously in wartime — a case that has become a flashpoint amid escalating tension with the federal courts. The declaration comes as U.S. District Judge James Boasberg weighs whether the government defied his order to turn around planes carrying migrants after he blocked deportations of people alleged to be gang members, with no due process. A Time magazine reporter described what happened to the detainees as they arrived at the mega-prison. Shackled, their heads were shaved, (not unlike what happened in Germany’s concentration camps in the 1930s), stripped naked, their clothes thrown away with their hair, as they were placed 80 to a cell.

• It’s Not Normal for U.S. border officials to now use more aggressive or “enhanced vetting,” at ports of entry to the United States, targeting legal immigrants and tourists and searching their phones for messages’ views that the government believes threaten national security and undermine foreign policy. American allies like Germany have now updated their travel advisories after three German citizens were detained in separate incidents. France’s research minister, a scientist, was denied entry to the U.S., as he was traveling to Houston for a conference when his phone was searched and messages critical of Trump were found.

• It’s Not Normal for a federal judge to have to block immigration officials from deporting a Georgetown University professor and postdoctoral scholar in conflict resolution who was detained by the Trump administration earlier this week. The judge stated that Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national, can't be removed from the U.S. "until the Court issues a contrary order."Suri is a scholar being detained or deported by the Trump administration for his support for Palestinian rights or for criticizing Israel for the war in Gaza. Suri's plight started March 17, when upon returning home, he was approached by masked federal agents who identified themselves as part of the Department of Homeland Security. They informed him that the government had revoked his visa. Another pro-Palestinian Cornell student Momodou Taal has been ordered to surrender to ICE and faces possible deportation. Last year, he was suspended twice for joining a demonstration calling on Cornell to divest from Israel. He faced deportation until massive protests pressured Cornell to allow him to re-enroll, thereby extending his visa. In yet another case, judge ordered the government to halt its efforts to arrest and deport Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia University student who was not a prominent participant in campus pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The government makes the suspect argument that Chung’s presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy goal of stopping the spread of antisemitism.

• It’s Not Normal for over 50 universities to be under investigation as part of Trump's anti-DEI crackdown. The U.S. Department of Education has now launched investigations into 52 universities in 41 states, accusing the schools of using "racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities." Under Trump’s DEI policy, the department's Office of Civil Rights has said that 45 schools, particularly their graduate programs, violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by partnering with The PhD Project, a nonprofit that helps students from underrepresented groups earn doctoral degrees in business. The program focuses on supporting Black, Latino and Native American students. The Education Department announced the new investigations, one month after issuing a memo warning America’s schools and colleges that they could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships or any aspect of student life. The department launched a new “End DEI” portal inviting students, parents and others to report discrimination based on race or sex in public schools. The department said it will use submissions to identify investigation targets.

• It’s Not Normal for Columbia University, facing the loss of $400 million in federal grants, to yield to the Trump administration on several of its most substantial demands. The university agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department in a remarkable concession to the Trump administration, which refused to consider restoring the $400 million in federal funds without major changes. Not all elite universities, however, are caving in to Trump’s demands, but it is part of a trend of powerful private sector institutions bowing to Trump’s threats and demands.

• It’s Not Normal for one of the nation’s largest law firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to agree to perform $40 million worth of free legal work on causes favored by the Trump administration. Trump’s executive order had pulled the firm’s security clearances and tried to terminate its federal contracts because it had sued January 6 rioters and because a former partner had worked on a Trump prosecution case. Trump’s order singled out the work of Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked at the firm and who oversaw an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump’s finances before Trump became president. Pomerantz once likened the president to a mob boss. The legal community is shaken by a Paul, Weiss’ decision to give in to Trump's demands.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to move to disqualify U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, brought by Perkins Coie to block Trump’s executive order against the law firm. The DOJ argued that Judge Howell, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was unable to be impartial in the case due to the judge’s previous rulings and statements related to President Trump and said "reasonable observers may view this court as incapable of fairly adjudicating" claims against Trump.

• It’s Not Normal for respected conservative former Federal Judge J. Michael Luttig to have to spell out the dangers of Trump’s “attacks on the rule of Constitution, the rule of law, the federal judiciary, the American justice system and the nation’s legal profession. When the president wages a war on the rule of law and federal judiciary, America is in a constitutional crisis. The constitutional role of the president is to faithfully execute the nation’s laws.” He said, targeting prestigious law firms such as Perkins and Coie, and Williams and Connolly because of their clients, whom he doesn’t like, “is one of the most sinister executive orders” and that the president has said he will go after other large firms just because of their clients, is what makes this precedent-setting case so sinister:

• It’s Not Normal for the Department of Justice to be creating a path for convicted felons to regain the right to own guns, after being ordered by the president to do so. The Justice Department recently moved to restore gun rights to Trump’s friend, actor Mel Gibson, who lost his gun rights in connection with a 2011 conviction on misdemeanor domestic violence charges. It’s even more abnormal for a Justice Department attorney to be fired by the Trump administration after she refused to recommend restoration of his gun rights. Former pardon attorney Liz Oyer said she felt she could not do so, given the risks associated with returning guns to those convicted of domestic violence and/or violent crimes.

• It’s Not Normal for the Department of Homeland Security to end work on terrorism prevention by cutting or freezing tens of millions of dollars slated for violence prevention as DOGE steamrolls the national security sector. “This is the government getting out of the terrorism business,” said one grant recipient who was ordered this week to cease work on projects including a database used by law enforcement agencies to assess threats.

• It’s Not Normal for an administration’s top-secret Yemen war plans to be inadvertently texted to the editor-in-chief at the Atlantic. Senior Trump cabinet members added the Atlantic journalist to a commercial-grade Signal app chat used to discuss secret strikes against Houthis, the rebels in Yemen. This kind of conversation about an upcoming military operation is normally conducted through a secure government channel or in what's known as a "sensitive compartmented information facility. A SCIF is so secure that you're not even allowed to bring your cellphone into it. It follows logically that you shouldn't be holding those same conversations on a cellphone either, much less using commercial software such as Signal.” Pentagon staffers had been warned earlier not to use Signal.

• It’s Not Normal for long-awaited classified government’s files on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to contain the non-redacted Social Security numbers and the birthdays of some 200 still-living, former congressional aides, including Trump’s former campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova. He said he is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws over concerns about identity theft.

•It’s Not Normal for the vice-president’s wife, Usha Vance, to plan to visit Greenland along with senior officials—a move branded as a "provocation" by furious politicians there, given that President Donald Trump has threatened to take over the territory. The announcement of the Second Lady's visit comes not long after her husband, JD Vance, said that the U.S. may need to "take more territorial interest in Greenland." Recent anti-U.S. demonstrations in Nuuk might have scared the Trump administration enough to revise the trip to avoid interactions with angry Greenlanders. The vice president’s decision to visit a U.S. military base 1,000 miles away from Greenland’s capital has removed the risk of violating potential diplomatic taboos of sending a delegation to a country without an official invitation.

• It’s Not Normal for the president to illegally fire Democrat Federal Trade Commission commissioners, who enforce a variety of consumer protection rules, including antitrust laws. The Supreme Court ruled in 1935 that FTC commissioners can only be fired for cause, such as neglecting their duties. The White House appears to have simply ignored this precedent and ousted two FTC commissioners anyway — not because of poor performance, but because they were Democratic appointees.

WEEK TEN OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for a president to appoint a White House faith advisor. Paula White will provide “Seven Spiritual Blessings” for $1,000 before Easter. It’s also not Normal that Trump is partnering with his friend Lee Greenwood, in promoting his “God Bless the USA Bible,” which includes the King James version of the Bible, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Pledge of Allegiance, for $60.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to cut USAID fund, halting funding for global vaccinations for the most vulnerable while hawking “seven Christian spiritual blessings for $1,000” in the White House, along with his special brand of the Bible, as his “favorite book.” The U.S. plans to cut funding for Gavi, which provides lifesaving vaccinations for one million children in the world’s poorest countries, a USAID document shows.

• It’s Not Normal for a presidential administration to abruptly cut billions from state health services. The Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were being used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues such as the measles or bird flu outbreaks.

• It’s Not Normal for children to be showing up with vitamin A toxicity and liver damage in Western Texas , where a major outbreak of measles is running rampant, after Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Fox News saying that therapies such as the use of cod liver oil, which contains vitamins A and D, "are working," he said.

• It’s Not Normal for the FDA’s top vaccine official to resign, pointing to RFK Jr.’s ‘misinformation and lies.’ The Food and Drug Administration’s chief vaccine regulator has been pushed out of the agency, in what could be a troubling sign of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to advance his anti-vaccine agenda throughout the Department of Health and Human Services.

• It’s Not Normal for Trump to withdraw Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday, indicating concern about a special election for her New York congressional seat, given the already-tiny Republican majority in the House.

• It’s Not Normal for a president to reportedly charge millions for guests to dine with him at the White House. Business leaders can drop $5 million for solo dinners with him at Mar-a-Lago, a likely way to cash in on those keen to get in the president’s good graces.

• It’s Not Normal for Vice President J.D. Vance to tell Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Germany is suffering an “invasion” of people who are “totally culturally incompatible” with “Western civilization.” This purported “invasion,” Vance said, will lead to a “civilizational suicide” if it’s not stopped, almost a verbatim echo of Neo Nazi Anders Breivik’s language in a 1,518-page document, a compendium of his own writing and other far-right texts, that was emailed to over 1,000 people. The deranged screed warned that Muslim immigration to Europe amounted to an “invasion” of people — whose culture was “incompatible with Western society — that would lead to the “cultural and demographic suicide” of the continent. Breivik massacred 77 people in Norway in 2011 at youth summer camp.

• It’s Not Normal for masked, uniformed persons claiming to be ICE agents to accost foreign students — much less ANY person — and then whisk them away in an unmarked car to a detention center in Louisiana. The State Department revoked Tufts doctoral student and Turkish citizen, Rumeysa Ozturk’s student visa because she co-wrote an op-ed for the school newspaper in March 2024, during President Biden’s term in office, criticizing Tufts’ response to a student government group’s call for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel because of the conflict in Gaza, among other demands. “Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide,” the op-ed said.

• It’s Not Normal for the U.S. State Department to revoke 300 student visas. Marco Rubio has stated he was going to expel “lunatics” who had taken part in campus movements, as well as criminals. Some are permanent U.S. residents: “If you apply for a student visa to come to the United States and you say you're coming not just to study, but to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos, we're not giving you that visa.” Around the country, many of those rounded up by Trump officials attended or were part of the pro-Palestinian movement that swept college campuses last year. Some detained students’ names appeared on lists made by far-right pro-Israel groups as targets for deportation.

• It’s Not Normal for a federal judge to have to order the release of a Venezuelan couple who work as custodians, and were detained by immigration authorities this month — for the second time — despite having legal authorization to live and work in the United States. At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema rebuked government officials for claiming in court that the couple posed a public threat and ordered both of them released straight from the courthouse. “There is no reason why they’re being held,” the judge said. Addressing a government lawyer, Brinkema said, “If this was a criminal case … I’d throw you out of my chambers.”

• It’s Not Normal for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have a photo opp with Venezuelan detainees who were plucked off U.S. streets, denied their “due process” deportation rights and were flown to an El Salvadoran supermax prison despite a federal judge’s injunction. Noem, who wore a $60,000 Rolex watch, dangly earrings, hair extensions and used the 80-some shaved-head cellmates to a single cell as a props backdrop behind her, could be in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which bans the use of prisoners in propaganda.

• According to The Bulwark, the Trump administration and El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) may have violated other aspects of the Geneva Conventions in their detention/war on the over 200 suspected Tren de Aragua gang members by not quickly providing the “names, serial numbers, and addresses of all prisoners so that the next of kin can be promptly advised”; not allowing every prisoner to “write directly to his family telling them about his situation, his health, and giving them his address” within a week of capture; and then not allowing the prisoners to “send and receive not less than two letters and four cards each month.”

• It’s Not Normal for a federal judge in Boston to have to issue a temporary emergency order blocking the Trump administration from sending anyone with a final deportation order to a country where they are not a citizen without first giving them a “meaningful opportunity” to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.

• It’s Not Normal for federal agents to detain a Detroit immigrant mother with two small children and her brother for five days when she made a wrong turn and took an exit leading to the bridge into Canada.

•It’s Not Normal New York University to cancel a presentation by Dr. Joanne Liu, the former international president of Doctors Without Borders, because her PowerPoint presentation included civilian casualties in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war as well as the cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Liu said she was told the slides about Gaza “could be perceived as antisemitic” while the USAID section might be perceived as “anti governmental.”

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to no longer explicitly prohibit contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains. The segregation clause is one of several identified in a public memo issued by the General Services Administration last month, affecting all civil federal agencies. The memo explains that it is making changes prompted by President Trump's executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion, which repealed an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 regarding federal contractors and nondiscrimination. The memo also addresses Trump's executive order on gender identity.

• It’s Not Normal for president to task his vice president with getting rid of exhibits or programs that promote what the White House considers “improper ideology.” Vice President J.D. Vance has asserted for years that progressive ideologies, particularly those that posit that the U.S. was built on systemic racism, undercut Americans’ sense of national pride and contribute to stagnation and despair.

• It’s Not normal for the vice president to “criticize Denmark as not a very good ally” during a visit to Greenland, which is governed by Denmark, when in fact they’ve sent troops who have sacrificed their lives whenever the U.S. has needed them, says a former ambassador to Denmark. Trump has repeatedly said he intends to take over Greenland by military force if necessary:

• It’s Not Normal for the Republican Congress to introduce a bill, “Reorganizing Government Act of 2025,” which would rubber-stamp Trump’s elimination of federal agencies without congressional approval. Congressional Republicans also know these dangerous, deeply unpopular cuts to Social Security and Medicare would never be approved by Congress through regular order," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "So now they've brought us H.R. 1295, the so-called Reorganizing Government Act, in a desperate attempt to circumvent the normal congressional process."

• It’s Not Normal for the richest man in the world to plunk down $20 million to support the Republican candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, even offering $1 million checks in a lottery for voters to support his candidate. What’s the big deal? Whether or not dropboxes will be used for voting, and how redistricting for Republican or Democratic power will take shape.

WEEK 11 OF TRUMP’S SECOND TERM

• It’s Not Normal for a president and his administration to levy global tariffs on 180 nations, including remote Antarctic islands inhabited only by penguins and seals and NOT to order any tariffs on Russia. The U.S. stock market has wiped out $9.6 trillion since Inauguration Day — including $5 trillion of which evaporated between April 2 and April 4 which is “the largest two-day loss on record,” according to MarketWatch.

• It’s Not Normal for a president and his administration to construct such a bizarre reciprocal tariff “formula” :

and for an economist and former U.S. secretary of treasury to harshly criticize the formula with scathing comparisons:

• It’s Not Normal for a president and his administration to threaten new 50% tariffs on China unless Beijing lifts its retaliatory duties on U.S. exports by Tuesday, April 7. China has refused to seek talks, saying it would “fight to the end” in a tariff war, prompting Trump to further jack up the tax rate on Chinese imports to 125%. China has retaliated with tariffs on U.S. goods of 84%, which have now taken effect.

• It’s Not Normal that a vocal billionaire Trump supporter, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, to feel compelled to warn America is on the brink of a “self-induced economic nuclear winter” due to tariffs.

• It’s Not Normal for the usually stable bond market to tank. On Wednesday, as the markets opened, a massive sell-off of the bond market signaled it was imploding, which would mark a disastrous end of the U.S. economy. The bond market is the spine of the economy on which mortgage rates in the housing market depend as well as integrity of our multinational federal debt. Panicked officials urged Trump to impose a 90-day pause and immediately the stock market began to soar:

• It’s Not Normal for a president to rely on White House trade adviser Peter Navarro , who created a made-up economist “Ron Vara” in his books, for economic advice on tariffs, that have unilaterally turned Donald Trump into a global disaster.

• It’s Not Normal for any administration to have open conflicts between the world’s richest man and a presidential adviser as we are seeing today. Elon Musk called President Donald Trump's top trade adviser Peter Navarro a "moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks" as the tariff debate continues to expose rifts inside the Republican administration and among the president's closest allies.

• It’s Not Normal that Republican senators have to use the power of Congress to rein in Trump on tariffs. After GOP senators helped pass a measure to revoke Trump's Canada tariffs, talks are underway to force a House vote. Senators have also unveiled a bipartisan bill to limit Trump’s authority.

• It’s Not Normal for a president within a month of taking office to begin to sell off federal properties, by terminating the roughly 7,500 leases managed by the General Services Administration nationwide and sell upward of another 500 properties to claim savings to taxpayers. Rep. Melanie Stansbury said, “The Trump administration is currently taking a fire sale approach of looting the federal government and stripping it for parts to pay for tax cuts that we know will come up in their reconciliation deal.”

• It’s Not Normal for a conspiracy theory social influencer to successfully persuade a president to fire six National Security Council officials, including Air Force Gen. Tim Haugh, who oversaw the Pentagon’s Cyber Command. He was four-star general with a 33-year career in intelligence and cyber operations. Senior military leaders received no advance notice about the decision.

• It’s Not Normal for the third acting IRS commissioner to resign amid internal chaos and the exodus of several senior IRS officials, including the IRS lawyer. The commissioner’s deferred resignation occurred after the IRS and Department of Homeland Security and ICE finalized an agreement to provide sensitive taxpayer data to federal immigration authorities to help the Trump administration locate and deport undocumented immigrants.

• It’s Not Normal for an administration to fire nearly 20,000 IRS employees, specifically targeting new hires in taxpayer services and enforcement divisions. It’s already dismissed more than 11,000 workers at the agency, though some of their statuses are unclear pending fast-moving court cases. The IRS has dropped investigations of high-value corporations and taxpayers, according to several agency employees involved in those inquiries, because it’s had to triage resources to keep internal systems operating. Three agency commissioners have resigned since Trump took office as well as the IRS’s head of compliance.

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to acknowledge in a court filing that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up. A federal judge ruled Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned by April 7. Instead of returning Garcia, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts halted the lower court order that would’ve required the Trump administration to return Garcia to the United States from El Salvador by midnight.

• It’s Not Normal for the Supreme Court to allow the Trump administration to use an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants. However, all nine Supreme Court justices have now ruled that the government may send deportees to the El Salvador prison, but only after the deportees have been afforded “due process.”

• It’s Not Normal for at least seven U.S. citizens — but likely far more — to have been detained, deported or otherwise targeted by the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

• It’s Not Normal for immigration agents to detain a lawyer representing a pro-Palestine student protester for 90 minutes at an airport.

• It’s Not Normal for a detained Tufts student suffering serious health issues in Department of Homeland Security custody to be cruelly denied her medications.

• It’s Not Normal for the president to“love” the idea of deporting American citizens to El Salvador. A reporter asked Trump Sunday whether he was considering an offer from El Savador President Nayib Bukele to “take American citizens in the federal prison population.” “Well, I love that,” Trump replied. The White House press secretary has confirmed Trump is exploring ways to ‘deport’ U.S. citizens to El Salvador prisons. The administration could try deporting American citizens if it identifies a pathway it can claim to be legal.

• It’s Not Normal for any White House administration to unveil a legal blueprint that will disappear anyone it wants. The Trump administration believes it has the legal authority to abduct any individual—citizen or immigrant, documented or not—and illegally deport them to another country without due process. It further claims that it can extinguish all of that person’s constitutional rights by imprisoning them in a foreign nation. And it asserts that once that person has been locked away abroad, the U.S. government has no power or responsibility to bring them home, even if they were indisputably deported in error.

• It’s Not Normal for a prominent Indiana University cybersecurity professor Xiaofeng Wang and his wife, Nianli Ma, also a lead systems analyst and programmer at the university's Library Technologies division to be “disappeared” — even scrubbed from the university’s website as if they never worked there. Students have reported that he has been missing from their classes for two weeks. Before the couple disappeared and the FBI raided two of the couple’s homes, the university is said to have been reviewing for months whether the professor, who had worked there since 2004, received unreported research funding from China. An IU union representative and law professor says they did not receive due process prior to being terminated. Their lawyer reports they are “safe” and neither have been arrested.

• It’s Not Normal for a woman detained by U.S. border patrol for overstaying her visa to die by suicide.

• It’s Not Normal for a U.S. senator to be compelled to deliver a marathon filibuster in protest of Trump's agenda. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s speech lasted 25 hours and four minutes, surpassing the 24 hour, 18 minute-filibuster by white supremacist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. Thurmond intended to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to prohibit the use of hundreds of words in government documents and communications such as: women, female, disabilities, climate crisis, equality, environmental justice, institutional, injustice, socioeconomic, political, multicultural, diversity, discrimination, Black, Native American, clean energy, pregnant persons, oppression, vulnerable populations, pollution, trauma and Gulf of Mexico.

• It’s Not Normal for Harvard’s Slavery Program to fire all 12 staff members without notice. Some 240 universities have ended their DEI programs due to Trump administration executive orders.

• It’s Not Normal for the National Park Service to remove Harriet Tubman references from their Underground Railroad webpage, as well as the words, “enslaved” people and the “Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.” The park service restored the page after a public outcry.

• It’s Not Normal for the Trump administration to cut $11 billion in health care funding to address state infectious diseases, causing Texas, the epicenter of a deadly measles outbreak, to close 50 vaccination centers as measles has now spread to 20 states.

• It’s Not Normal for the Health and Human Services Department to dismantle vaccination programs. But under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS has cut $2 billion from a program that supports vaccines for vulnerable children, forcing public health departments to lay off staff and cancel clinics. But RFK Jr. has chosen vaccine skeptic David Geier — who has no degree in medicine and had been disciplined by the State of Maryland’s Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license — to conduct a study that links vaccinations to autism, proven to be a false claim.

• It’s Not Normal for the Social Security Administration to miss checks or undergo repeated website outages when IDs need to be verified online for change of addresses for checks or new bank account transactions. Seven thousand staff have been cut — and more layoffs are expected, including the information technology department which has lost critical staff with the most experience and knowledge of SSA systems, impairing phone customer service. Over 40 field offices have closed, requiring those who cannot verify their IDs online to travel long distances in some states to the nearest field office. Critics have said the Trump administration is purposely trying to sabotage the system so that it can be privatized.

• It’s Not Normal for the Social Security Administration's acting commissioner to issue an order that would have required Maine parents to register their newborns for Social Security numbers at a federal office rather than the hospital. Public outcry quickly reversed this plan. Newly unearthed emails show that the March 5 decision was made as political payback targeting Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who has defied the Trump administration’s push to deny federal funding to the state over transgender athletes.

• It’s Not Normal for the Department of Justice to intimidate witnesses who would be testifying at a Democratic party “shadow hearing” on DOJ employees who resigned or were fired in recent months over being ordered to violate ethical norms.

• It’s Not Normal for an FBI deputy director to have a full security detail 24x7, even when inside FBI headquarters. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow discusses the waste in Trump’s own staff:

• It’s Not Normal for the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, to spend $26 million on attack campaign ads in a Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice election and then to use the wrong candidate’s photo, as The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng points out:

• It’s Not Normal for heads of state or their representatives to arrive in a nation uninvited. President Trump has stated his intention to take over Greenland from Denmark through negotiation or through military force. Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha, spent just three hours in Greenland at the U.S. Pituffik Space Base, 930 miles north of Greenland’s capital, Nuuk — having changed their original plans after Greenland’s prime minister considered their visit a “highly aggressive act” that would have been met by demonstrators.

Other resources to keep you informed:

• New York Times’ Compilation of executive orders and their legality, and Tracking lawsuits against the Trump administration

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

• ProPublica’s Abortion investigative reporting

• Forbes’ Major corporations rolling back DEI programs

• Substack’s Sleeping Giant: How Other Nations Oust Their Autocrats

• Substack’s Sleeping Giant: We’re Thinking About Constitutional Crises All Wrong

• The Chronicle of Higher Education’s tracking of Higher Education’s Dismantling of DEI

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.”