May 3, 2025

To Be Equal 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "Trump wants us to be demoralized. He wants his despotic plans to be a fait accompli. They will be if no one stands in the way. But every time we — and especially those with power and authority — make ourselves into obstacles, we also make it a little less likely that the administration’s authoritarian fantasy becomes our reality.” –Jamelle Bouie

The first 100 days of President Trump’s second administration have been an unrelenting assault on civil rights, civil liberties, economic justice, the constitutional separation of powers, and the rule of law itself.

His administration has upended the global financial system, alienated longstanding allies, and steered the United States rapidly toward autocracy.

He has imposed a grossly distorted version of the nation’s history to justify the elimination of pathways to equity and inclusion, and appointed Cabinet members and staffers who have actively embraced conspiracy theories, bigotry and racism.

Since Trump’s inauguration, at least $9.6 trillion was erased from the U.S. stock market – more than half of that in just two record-setting days. His first 100 days in office have been the worst for the stock market in more than 50 years.

His administration has blocked at least $3 trillion in federal spending, defying court orders to unfreeze the funds that tens of millions of Americans rely on to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, and access to lifesaving medical care.

The first 100 days of this administration have been an assault on the last 70 years of progress, from Brown v Board all the way forward. It is an assault on the American future. The administration is trying to convince the American people that the future is a replay of the past. Instead of looking forward, they've been looking in their rearview mirror.

This is reflected in the early verdict of the American people. President Trump has the lowest 100-day approval rating of any president in the last 80 years, and twice as many Americans give the administration a grade of “F” than any other grade.

This is not what people voted for, and it is not what people expected.

And so these 100 days of unprecedented chaos have also been 100 days of principled resistance.

Within a day of the inauguration, the National Urban League convened dozens of the nation’s top civil and human rights leaders for an emergency strategy session and launch of the new Demand Diversity Roundtable to defend equal opportunity for all Americans.

Individual Americans, businesses, faith communities, schools, state officials and advocacy organizations including the National Urban League have filed more than 200 lawsuits challenging Trump’s actions as reckless, harmful, illegal, and unconstitutional. “These acts of resistance have resulted in nearly 100 rulings that put a stop – at least temporarily – to some of these actions.

The National Urban League also has spearheaded the Fair Budget Coalition,  an alliance of civil rights, economic justice, and policy organizations advocating for a responsible federal budget that centers fairness, opportunity, and economic security for all Americans— including people and communities long overlooked and under-resourced.

We’ve mobilized opposition to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), an extremist proposal to dismantle democracy and disenfranchise millions of American citizens.

As we mark 100 days into this antagonistic and chaotic administration, we take hope and inspiration from the millions of Americans who continue to stand in defense of democracy, equality, and the rule of law.
 

May 2, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As we see it unfold before our eyes, it is unlikely future history books will ever tell the true story of how the civil rights protection we fought hard to obtain is now being surgically removed.

In his second term, President Trump has successfully placed key people in positions throughout the Justice Department. As a result, hundreds of devoted and passionate civil servants who believe in the true mission of justice for all have been removed. Appointees in President Trump’s administration have ordered the dismissal of all voting rights cases and removed managers of the division responsible for overseeing them. Sources told The Guardian that all active cases in the voting rights section were expected to be dropped.

The move comes less than a month after Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally, was appointed to lead the Civil Rights Division. “In an unusual move, Dhillon sent out new mission statements to the department’s sections that made it clear the civil rights division was shifting its focus from protecting the civil rights of marginalized people to supporting Trump’s priorities,” the paper said. This one move means we will no longer have the enforcement of laws against voter discrimination by the federal government. As states continue to pass restrictive voting measures, Trump’s Department of Injustice is giving them the green light.

As the assault by the Trump administration continues, the world is watching. The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms. Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil societies around the world, announced the addition of the United States on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 as it sees a “significant deterioration” in civic freedoms occurring.

The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalist in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid, the administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings and the attempted dismantling of USAID. These are just a handful of examples of how the leader of the free world has fallen to a new low.

While the authoritarian threat is real with long-term consequences, will there be an organized resistance in the form of a mass countermovement? We cannot depend on the constitutional checks and balances that was meant to prevent this type of takeover due to those who currently hold the power in the three branches of government. Republicans within GOP-controlled House and Senate are not sounding the alarm nor are they showing the moral courage to oppose Trumpism. We cannot dependent on a John Roberts-led Supreme Court.

We cannot depend on the “soft spots” throughout the MAGA movement to wake up after experiencing the pain from Trump’s policies. We are seeing that while they may be hurting, as long as those who they hate are hurting more, Trump gets a pass. We are also seeing some conservatives are seeing the light. It is interesting that as a neoconservative, David Brooks wrote about a coordinated mass movement in his New York Times opinion column. He writes, “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

In referencing nonviolent uprising confronting authoritarian assaults, Brooks continued, “These movements began small and built up. They developed clear messages that appealed to a variety of groups. They shifted the narrative so the authoritarians were no longer on permanent offense. Sometimes they used nonviolent means to provoke the regime into taking violent action which shocks the nation, undercuts the regime’s authority and further strengthens the movement. (Think of the civil rights movement at Selma). Right now, Trumpism is dividing civil society; if done right, the civic uprising can begin to divide the forces of Trumpism.”

At some point, something major has to be done if Trump and Trumpism is going to be stopped.  Whatever it is, it has to be strategic and diverse. The question is what and then when? The last major movement in our nation was the Black Lives Matter movement.

The long-term impact still remains to be seen. Older generations are still intimately familiar with the civil rights movement, but this is different. The federal government was not the main culprit then as it is now. It is different because America, at that time, was not faced with an authoritarian in the White House who believes he is above the law. It is different because the Black church is not the center of the Black community as it was in the past. Many people may disagree with the Black church’s role during the civil rights the movement, but it’s effective organization through a national network of churches cannot be disputed. Any successful movement, as described by David Brooks, will need the moral courage of the Black church along with its local and national network.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.

April 29, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Are you better off than you were three months ago, when the current President was sworn into office on January 20?  That’s the question President Ronald Reagan posed to voters when he squared off against President Jimmy Carter in 1980.  Voters concluded that they are worse off and chose Reagan over Carter.  But the current President is lucky that no election is taking place tomorrow.  His approval ratings have tanked.  He has the lowest 100 day approval rating of any President since pollsters started asking this question.  Are you better off?

Don’t ask the thousands of federal workers who have lost their jobs, including those who used to work at US AID, or the IRS, or the Social Security Administration, among others.  Don’t ask the elders who are frightened about the future of Social Security.  Don’t ask the university professors who wonder if their free speech rights will be protected.  If you ask any of these folks, they are likely to tell you that they are worse off than they were 100 days since the President gook office, though some will tell you they are patiently hoping for things to get better.

When the current President was elected, he promised to lower prices and inflation.  Prices have not come down, nor has inflation.  Instead, this President has behaved like the proverbial bull in a China closet, wreaking havoc and creating chaos across the board.  The President’s basic economic policy is tariffs.  His rationale is that US-based manufacturing will grow if imports are more expensive than domestic goods.  But the United States has neither the workforce nor the capacity to significantly increase in the United States. 

No matter.  The President is stuck on senseless and can’t seem to make up his mind about economic policy.  First unreasonably high tariffs were imposed, then suspend for everyone except China.  The chaos and confusion make it impossible for businesses and consumers to plan.  Planning an automobile purchase?  Would you buy the car now or hold off, given looming tariffs?  What about electronics?  Initially caught up in the tariff wars, a call from one of the President’s tech bros suspended, for now, tariffs on electronics.  What will happen three months from now?

Co-President Elon Musk, who was allowed to purchase a major role in government, is moving unchecked from the federal organization, clowning with a buzz saw, while workers are apprehensive about their futures.  The federal government is experiencing brain drains, with many of the longest-serving workers preferring to retire than deal with the whiplash of trying to figure out what’s next.  Recession fears are now at the 1990 level, and consumer confidence is at its lowest level since 1952.  Musk’s economic acumen is demonstrated by the precipitous drop –71 percent – in his stock announced he will cut back on his work with the Department of Government Efficiency.

In his one hundred plus days, marked on April 29, this President has issued about 140 executive orders.  Though he was elected to manage the economy, few of these executive orders have to do with the economy.  Instead, he has leaped into the culture wars, including executive orders specifically targeting some of the Smithsonian Museums, especially the National Museum of African American History and Culture.  The executive orders, which are not laws, have introduced an atmosphere of fear and obeisance.  Law firms, universities, and others are happily kowtowing to this President’s racist, anti-diversity agenda. Too many, included elected legislators, are operating out of fear, too intimidated to say that the emperor is wearing no clothes. 

Our economy is suffering, and so is our international reputation.  Mexico and Canada, among our largest trading partners, are furious with us, so much so that Canadians elected a Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who was trailing in the polls until this President started attacking Canada.  Who can trust us or plan to do business with us after our vacillating policies have left them confused?  Who will lend us money when they can’t trust our stability.  Can the European Union use this uncertainty to strengthen the euro?  Will the euro supplant the dollar as the world’s default currency?

In addition to the chaos and confusion, there is also the delusion that this President continues to embrace – that he won the 2020 election.  This delusion fuels much of his decision-making, as many who investigated him have now been threatened with investigation.  This administration seems to revel in delusions, including delusions about history, delusions about prices (the President keeps saying grocery prices have dropped – they have not), and delusions about reality. 

If I had to grade this President on his 100 day performance, I’d give him lower than a failing grade, call it an F minus.  He is wrecking both the national and the international economy.  He has ushered in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.  And he has the nerve to say he “having fun” in the process. 

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC based economist and author.  She can be reached at juiannemalveaux.com

JANUARY 20, 2025 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday commemoration to be recognized on the same day that Dr. King’s very antithesis is inaugurated into the Presidency is to bring Frankie Beverly’s song Joy and Pain, to mind. 

We always experience joy at the very thought of Dr. King, his brilliance, his courage, his resilience.  We are reminded of his self-description as a “drum major for justice”, and his harsh criticism of church hypocrisy in the Letter From A Birmingham Jail.  From his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance speech, “I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”  King once described himself, in a letter to her wife, Coretta, as “a socialist” because he cared about economic justice and distribution issues.  In one speech, he thundered “if the world is two-thirds water, why do we pay water bills”?

The current President, in contrast, has surrounded himself with oligarchs and predatory capitalists, industrial titans who already have billions of dollars of government contracts who aspire to get even more.  Putting them in leadership is akin to placing the fox as the overseer of the henhouse, then hoping there will be chickens left when you return.  The joy of our MLK celebration is dampened, just a bit, by the current state of national politics and by the realized promises of the 47^th President. 

Forty-seven said he would pardon the January 6 disruptors and terrorists, and he did, even excusing those who assaulted police officers, even though 47 campaigned with police support.  The accounts of Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell, two Capitol Police officers who were attacked and eventually left their jobs, are harrowing.  Both are angered by the Republican members of Congress who have kowtowed to the 47^th President to the point that they have forgotten that Capitol Police officers saved their lives.  About 140 officers were assaulted, beaten, sprayed.  Several died from the stress.  This seems to be acceptable to the current Republican administration.  Joy and Pain.

It is amusing or pathetic, whichever you prefer, to hear Republicans attempt to redefine reality.  There was no insurrection, says the 47^th President, just a protest that happened “out of love”.  Where is the love for a man like Gonell, who served in Afghanistan, says he loves our country, yet experienced two or more surgeries from the January 6 physical attack.  The people who attacked him deserve incarceration, not pardons, but to maintain the fiction that there was no violence on January 6, pardons serve to paper over the lie.

In a frenzy of take-over ecstasy, the 47^th President issued about two hundred executive orders, including the pardons, rollbacks of Biden executive actions, increased border restrictions (declaring the US-Mexico border a “national emergency” even though border crossings are down), One of his executive orders attack federal workers, making it easier for them to be fired without cause.  Although our Constitution mandates citizenship for anyone born in this country, he is attempting, through executive order, to eliminate that right.  He will withdraw our country from the Paris Climate Accord, eve as we experience the devastating effects of climate change.  And he will withdraw us from the World Health Organization (WHO), which weakens health stability on the planet. 

COVID was a global, not a national, phenomenon, and we needed WHO-generated data to deal with the virus.  All in all, the executive orders are a naked power grab, an attempt to diminish the role of the Congress.  And while organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others have filed suits against this President, he has so stacked the Supreme Court that they may well find in his favor. 

This consolidation of presidential power is dangerous and painful, but there is joy in the energy and spirit of the resisters.  Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network moved their planned outdoor rally from McPherson Park to the historic Metropolitan AME Church, where an overflow crowd listened and learned about ways to resist.  In more than eighty cities, including Washington, DC, the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition held rallies of resistance against this new administration.  These actions are a necessary response to those who would widen the wealth gap, not narrow it.  As an example, the oligarchs say that tariffs would offset any losses from the extension of the Trump tax cuts.  But tax cuts benefit those at the top, while tariffs burden those at the bottom.

There is joy in revolution, but extreme pain at the attacks on democracy, on human rights, and on basic decency.  Our answer – litigation, when executive orders break the law; legislation, when new laws are needed and we have enough allies to pass them; and agitation, the culture of protest, or resistance, of truth-telling.  In the words of Frederick Douglass, agitate, agitate, agitate.  The current president thinks he can circumvent the Constitution.  Many Republicans don’t agree.  We’ll see.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist and author based in Washington, DC.

Jan. 20, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Ratepayers beware. Team Trump’s eagerness to enrich his fossil fuel industry cronies with his “drill baby drill” (and export baby export) agenda is going to raise energy costs for American households.

Burning fossil fuels is deadly on many levels. The pollution in our air and water from burning coal, oil, and gas kills people. The pollution from extracting fossil fuels from the ground and transporting them kills people. And the climate crisis and its extreme weather events – extreme heat waves, supercharged wildfires and hurricanes – kill people.

Just as our continued reliance on fossil fuels kills people and entire ecosystems, slowing down our transition to clean energy kills jobs. Because of President Biden’s signature legislative achievements, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and the CHIPS and Science Act we have seen clean energy projects create more than 406,000 new jobs across this country. Hundreds of thousands additional jobs are being created as an indirect result of these new clean energy jobs. 

We are reshoring entire supply chains for the products and technologies that will be the foundation of the new global economy. American manufacturing is back. And after losing 65,000 American factories since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect 30 years ago, factories are now coming back – this time, building solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and batteries. 

But it is not enough for fossil fuel interests and their allies in the Trump administration to put our lives and livelihoods in jeopardy. They are sprinting to make those factories empty once again, sending American jobs anywhere but America as they kill our pocketbooks with higher energy costs.

Energy from solar and wind power is not only already less expensive and more resilient than energy from fossil fuels, it keeps getting cheaper. So efforts by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress to slow the transition to clean energy are not just anti-climate, they are anti-consumer. When they say they want to come after the IRA or undo “Green New Deal” policies, they are talking about jacking up the cost of lighting and heating your home.

It is all based on the big lie that increasing fossil fuel production and supply will lower energy costs. That is hardly the case. Especially when we are talking about exporting those fossil fuels. And that brings us to “liquified natural gas,” or LNG. 

The US is already the world’s leading exporter of LNG. Methane gas is a powerful greenhouse gas – more than 80 times more powerful at warming that carbon dioxide. And the lifecycle of LNG – from fracking and transport to liquefaction and refinement to shipping and burning – is fraught with methane leaks, making it nearly as harmful to the climate as coal. But the LNG market is also volatile, and the oil and gas companies that have such ambitious plans for expanding exports to countries and markets that will pay far more for it than the domestic market rate. That drives up the price of methane gas here at home.

The Department of Energy released a report confirming that unfettered LNG exports would drive up domestic energy prices – further supporting the Biden administration’s pause of LNG export projects as the right choice. 

But Big Oil and Gas can get rich from the higher prices other countries are willing to pay, so they don’t care about household energy burdens here at home. And they are even willing to undermine our national security by supplying LNG to our rivals, like the Chinese government, who can then resell it and leverage their role as an energy supplier elsewhere in the world. All the while, domestic consumers potentially face paying billions more in annual energy costs.

President Trump has made big promises to Big Oil and Gas in exchange for their support of his reelection. At one campaign fundraiser, Trump told oil and gas executives if they collectively contributed $1 billion to his reelection they would essentially get whatever they want and it would be a “deal” for them. They got the message. In addition to many other high-dollar contributions from the industry, the CEO of the country’s largest LNG exporter Cheniere Energy kicked in $250,000. Cheniere continues to rapidly develop more export capacity at new and existing LNG terminals on the Gulf coast.

LNG is not the only way Trump could increase energy costs for everyday Americans. If his threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports happen, prices at the pump could end up rising between 35 and 75 cents a gallon. That is according to GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan, who says the increases might be steepest in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions but would likely happen across all regions. And Trump’s baffling war on energy efficient home appliances threatens utility bill savings that would benefit millions of households and are especially important to low-income families. Those families spend as much as four times more on energy bills as a portion of their household income.

Trump has talked a big game on bringing down energy prices. But most of his proposed policies – from more oil and gas drilling to his attacks on clean energy and energy efficiency standards – are far more likely to drive the cost for consumers up. Americans need relief from punishingly high energy prices, not to be sacrificed on the altar of fossil fuel industry profits.  

Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.