Trump's Second Term

As of the close of the day on March 2, my positive/negative score on the Trump administration stands at -205.

1 March 2025
0: Executive Order: Designating English as the Official Language of The United States
-1: Executive Order: Addressing the Threat to National Security from Imports of Timber, Lumber
-1: Executive Order: Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production (-1 for environmental impacts)
-1: Executive Order: Amendment to Duties to Address the Situation at our Southern Border
-1: Executive Order: Amendment to Duties to Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs across our Northern Border
-1: Headline: "Musk's DOGE fires federal tech team that built free tax-filing site" (Reuters)

Added to February 28:
-1: Trump misstates the US aid to Ukraine as $350 billion; it's actually half that at $180 billion
 
Wudang said:
I haven't found an authoritive source but the concensus seems to be the top or more DNS record(s) have been deleted but DNS caching (if you end up going through some DNS servers) still has records cached for now.
In the meantime this is apparently the European mirror https://europepmc.org/
NB mainly from Bluesky etc posts so may be skipping details. Whether an official mirror or an equivalent service is unclear.
Click to expand...
From what I can see, pubmed is still in DNS. The following DNS trace starts at the root servers and ends with a valid record for pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:
Code: 
[blue@mountain:~]$ dig +trace pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

; <<>> DiG 9.11.22-RedHat-9.11.22-1.fc31 <<>> +trace pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
;; global options: +cmd
.            301436    IN    NS    m.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    k.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    f.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    h.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    l.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    a.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    i.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    c.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    g.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    e.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    b.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    d.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    NS    j.root-servers.net.
.            301436    IN    RRSIG    NS 8 0 518400 20250313220000 20250228210000 26470 . <details snipped>
;; Received 1125 bytes from 192.168.1.2#53(192.168.1.2) in 30 ms

gov.            172800    IN    NS    a.ns.gov.
gov.            172800    IN    NS    b.ns.gov.
gov.            172800    IN    NS    c.ns.gov.
gov.            172800    IN    NS    d.ns.gov.
gov.            86400    IN    DS    2536 13 2 0BAF26B7BBF313A859046FD3B1EE49DDFBA33934CFB3E717C21E2A29 35C2F259
gov.            86400    IN    RRSIG    DS 8 1 86400 20250316050000 20250303040000 26470 .  <details snipped>
;; Received 630 bytes from 170.247.170.2#53(b.root-servers.net) in 48 ms

nih.gov.        10800    IN    NS    ns.nih.gov.
nih.gov.        10800    IN    NS    ns2.nih.gov.
nih.gov.        10800    IN    NS    ns3.nih.gov.
nih.gov.        3600    IN    DS    25564 8 2 20C290555FABC77319E56EB35750074006B73EBABA31E0A7AB5AB7B5 F8DC33BC
nih.gov.        3600    IN    DS    59659 8 2 27F8EECB5A889E72E2733C8FBD11CF5E641FEFAAC6036455848234C5 5A7C4D76
nih.gov.        3600    IN    RRSIG    DS 13 2 3600 20250304134549 20250302114549 35496 gov.  <details snipped>
;; Received 348 bytes from 199.33.233.1#53(d.ns.gov) in 26 ms

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 86400    IN    A    34.107.134.59
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 86400    IN    RRSIG    A 8 5 86400 20250829122733 20250302122733 16545 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. <details snipped>
;; Received 400 bytes from 165.112.4.230#53(ns3.nih.gov) in 45 ms
 
The Don said:
It's not even $180bn, that's the amount earmarked. The amount actually delivered so far is less than half of that.
Click to expand...
This sounds like US aid to Ukraine. Did you perhaps post it in the wrong thread?

ETA: Oh, I see you forgot to quote the line in my previous post:
Blue Mountain said:
-1: Trump misstates the US aid to Ukraine as $350 billion; it's actually half that at $180 billion
Click to expand...

Also, with most aid spending on hold and Friday's shouting match in the Oval Office, the other $90 billion or so may never be delivered.
 
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Blue Mountain said:
-1: Executive Order: Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production (-1 for environmental impacts)
Click to expand...
Presumably there'll be an approximately equivalent reduction in supply from Canada and there'll also be a reduced environmental impact from transportation.
 
Heard a good line from the Oscars last night: "Anora is having a good night … I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.”"
 
Dr.Sid said:
Did I miss something or did exactly zero republicans criticize Trump's position toward Ukraine and Russia ?
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Mike Lawler (R-NewYork) was on PBS News Hour. "And so the only winner here today was Vladimir Putin and Russia because a deal did not come to be, which is also why I believe it's critically important for President Zelenskyy and President Trump to get back together and work towards finalizing an agreement, because when this conflict does come to an end, and it will at some point, when it comes to an end, Ukraine is going to need significant U.S. and European investment to rebuild."

BBC News reported, "Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican who is something of a political thorn in Trump's side, posted on X on Saturday: "I am sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin." Republican Rep Mike Lawler of New York called the meeting "a missed opportunity for both the United States and Ukraine". Fellow Rep Don Bacon of Nebraska said it was "a bad day for America's foreign policy." Ukraine wants independence, free markets and rule of law. It wants to be part of the West. Russia hates us and our Western values. We should be clear that we stand for freedom," he said in a statement.""
 
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Blue Mountain said:
Executive order: Addressing the Threat to National Security from Imports of Timber, Lumber

I've rated this as a negative action because it's clearly aimed at Canada's lumber exports. They are supposed to be protected by the free trade agreement.

If nothing else, Trump is being consistent by simply doing what previous administrations have done. Canadian lumber exports to the States have been an irritant for over two decades. Every administration has questioned them and put tariffs on them because Canada is apparently "dumping" lumber into the American market. Almost every time, a review has shown that not to be the case, forcing the States to back down. This is just another round in that dispute.
Click to expand...

Years ago, the US strong-armed many nationss into joinging the WTO, only to ignore rulings that didn't go in their favour.

One silver lining is that it will reduce home building costs here.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Mike Lawler (R-NewYork) was on PBS News Hour. "And so the only winner here today was Vladimir Putin and Russia because a deal did not come to be, which is also why I believe it's critically important for President Zelenskyy and President Trump to get back together and work towards finalizing an agreement, because when this conflict does come to an end, and it will at some point, when it comes to an end, Ukraine is going to need significant U.S. and European investment to rebuild."

BBC News reported, "Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican who is something of a political thorn in Trump's side, posted on X on Saturday: "I am sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin." Republican Rep Mike Lawler of New York called the meeting "a missed opportunity for both the United States and Ukraine". Fellow Rep Don Bacon of Nebraska said it was "a bad day for America's foreign policy." Ukraine wants independence, free markets and rule of law. It wants to be part of the West. Russia hates us and our Western values. We should be clear that we stand for freedom," he said in a statement.""
Click to expand...
Mark Lawler sounds like he's criticising Zelensky not Trump
 
Seems to me that the only way to reduce the Trade Deficit is to stop demanding that the Dollar is the currency for commodity trading.
The logic to prevent another Oil Crisis no longer applies, as America is now the top oil producer in the world.
 
The Don said:
Mark Lawler sounds like he's criticising Zelensky not Trump
Click to expand...
It means whatever you want it to mean. He's running for governor in NY. He can't piss off the Republicans, who have all gone far-right here. But, he doesn't want to fire up Democrats. Kathy Hochul isn't particularly popular here, but another MAGA candidate will be enough to keep her in Albany.
 
The Don said:
Mark Lawler sounds like he's criticising Zelensky not Trump
Click to expand...
Representative Lawler also said, "This was an unprovoked war of aggression by Putin, who has committed numerous war crimes." I agree that whom Rep. Lawler thinks is more to blame for the failure of Friday's meeting is not stated explicitly, but one might infer it between the lines. Let me explore (meaning I am not sure that what I am suggesting is practical) what might be an unpopular position: Zelensky should have been advised that he was walking into a trap and therefore chosen words to minimize the damage.
 
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Reddit’s Conservative subreddit has been tying itself in knots of late unable to deal with Trumps antics not being popular. First they made multiple posts about those Town Halls must have been stuffed full of Democrats to get the reactions those representatives got. Then when the Zelenskyy meeting went south they first tried to spin it as a great moment of chess moves by Trump, but even their own weren’t buying it so they posted a slew of anti-Ukraine propaganda. Then they got huffy when people called it out as propaganda.

Over the weekend they decided that the reactions to Trump’s damaging antics on their subreddit must be the result of brigading so the mods changed things around to restrict posts even more, and they set the subreddit to automatically sort by “Controversial” so the downvoted posts would stick it to the libs right at the top.

ETA: Oh, and their reaction to the Vermont protests of Vance has been a mix of “why didn’t the secret service just shoot them all” mixed with “what is this peaceful protesting?! Where are out goons to bust them up.”
 
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Hegseth orders pause in US cyber-offensive against Russia

The reasoning for the instruction has not been publicly stated, and it is not clear how long the halt might last. The defence department has declined to comment.

The directive reportedly came before Trump ended up in a televised row with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday.

www.bbc.co.uk

Hegseth orders pause in offensive US cyber operations against Russia

The reported directive from the defence secretary comes during an American push to end the war in Ukraine.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
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