Donald Trump and the GOP leaders in Congress continue to say that they support ordinary working Americans and the middle class. Yet virtually everything they have done indicates otherwise. Following is the latest list of attacks on the American people:
• The GOP-led Federal Communications Commission voted to end Net Neutrality making it possible for corporations to discriminate and to charge you for access to certain content and applications.
• The GOP Senate passed a tax bill that will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. (A better way to look at it is the GOP plans to take $1.5 trillion from ordinary working families and give it to billionaires and large corporations!)
• Many provisions in the GOP tax bill are carefully targeted to punish voters in predominately Democratic states.
• As part of the tax bill, the GOP Senate included a provision that will end the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which will make health care unaffordable for as many as 13 million Americans.
• The Trump administration further undermined the Affordable Care Act by allowing insurance companies to offer bare bones insurance plans that will encourage young, healthy Americans to leave the ACA and raise premiums for older Americans.
• The GOP cut subsidies to help pay the cost of health insurance for low-income Americans.
• The GOP cut payments to insurance companies that compensate them for losses created by the pent-up demand for health care of new ACA enrollees.
• The Trump administration defunded publicity campaigns for ACA enrollment and shortened the enrollment period in an attempt to reduce participation in the ACA marketplaces.
• As part of the tax bill, GOP senators voted to recognize the “personhood” of fetuses in order to set the stage for repealing a woman’s right to control her own body.
• The Senate tax bill weakens the separation of church and state by giving churches the right to campaign from the pulpit without risk of losing their tax-exempt status.
• With a stroke of a pen, Trump stole millions of acres of unspoiled land and sacred sites from Native Americans with the intent of offering it for sale to extraction industries.
• The Trump administration banned travel to the US from 7 Muslim-majority nations while overlooking the oil-rich Muslim nations that spawned virtually all of the Muslim extremists who attacked the US.
• Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accord on climate change, making the US and Syria the only nations not part of the agreement.
• The GOP passed a bill overturning an Obama-era initiative to keep the mentally ill from purchasing guns.
• The GOP has blocked a bill that would make bump stocks (the type of devices used in the Las Vegas mass shooting) illegal.
• Trump has empowered ICE to break up families by deporting thousands of undocumented workers.
• Trump announced that he would be discontinuing DACA making it possible to deport young adults who were brought to the US as children and forcing them from the only country they know.
• Trump endorsed and campaigned for a GOP senate candidate who had been accused of being a predator of underage women.
• The GOP increased the military budget by a whopping $700 billion even though the Pentagon couldn’t account for $6.5 trillion in an audit by the Defense Department’s Inspector General.
• The Trump Department of Justice ended its program designed to track home-grown terrorists, such as Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and the so-called “Alt-Right.”
• The GOP Congress has failed to fund CHIP, putting the health of millions of poor children at risk.
• The GOP announced that it plans to cut billions from SNAP, the food stamp program for the poor.
• Trump and the GOP have packed the court system with young, often unqualified, judges based on their willingness to end abortion rights.
• The Trump Labor Department plans to relax restrictions that prevent restaurant owners from taking their employees’ tips.
• Trump inflamed the Middle East by officially taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capitol.
• It has been reported that Trump is considering the creation of a private spy network to be run by Erik Prince, the mercenary who founded the private security firm, Blackwater.
• Trump has goaded North Korea, bringing our nations to the brink of nuclear war.
• The GOP has created a maze of obstacles to make it more difficult for minorities to vote.