August 10, 2020

Trump Continues Fiddling While America Burns

Donald Trump looking pumped on his way to a million-dollar fundraiser in the Hamptons after playing at being president with his faux executive orders.Sonia Moskowitz Gordon/ZUMA

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Donald Trump has issued some executive orders related to coronavirus aid, and I suppose we’re all supposed to take them seriously. But why? To paraphrase an old saying, the stuff that’s legal is unimportant and the stuff that’s important is illegal. It’s just more Trump blather designed to keep the spotlight on him.

But I suppose you want a little more than that. Fine. Here goes:

  1. The first EO provides a $400 unemployment bonus. This is important, but almost certainly not legal. The money is supposed to be transferred from unspent FEMA accounts, which is a transfer that Trump probably can’t make. What’s more, Trump wants states to pick up 25 percent of the cost, and he definitely can’t do that. The Supreme Court made that clear when it struck down Obamacare’s Medicaid mandate. What’s even yet more, even if all this were legal, the money would only last five weeks.
  2. The second EO defers payroll taxes from September through December. This is probably legal, but deeply trivial. The amount of money involved is small. It helps only people who are already employed. And the deferred taxes have to be paid back in a lump sum in January. It’s pointless.
  3. A third EO asks federal agencies to “consider” whether evictions should be temporarily halted. This is obviously legal, but has no impact at all.
  4. Finally, the fourth EO defers student loan payments through the end of the year. This is legal, and maybe even modestly important. However, like the payroll tax deferral, it will primarily help out people who are the most likely to still have jobs.

I am deeply tired of these idiotic Republican games. Because that’s all they seem to be to them: games. There are millions of Americans in deep, deep trouble because of the coronavirus, and they’re in even deeper trouble than they should be thanks to Trump’s gross mismanagement of the crisis. But none of that seems to matter to any of them. Human suffering is just another political lever to be used in service of God only knows what political aim they have at the moment.

It’s all so appalling and loathsome. I can barely stand reading about it any longer, let alone writing about it.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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