Trump Administration Removes Federal Database That Tracked Pollution

More incredible assholery from this huge asshole of an administration. 

Trump To Release Executive Order Criminalizing Homelessness

President Donald Trump is looking to make a move on addressing America’s homelessness crisis, shirking the advice of advocates in favor of a focus on increasing law enforcement involvement in the issue, according to City Lab. 

An executive order could be coming down the pike soon, advocates believe, that would “assign new resources to police departments to remove homeless encampments and even strip housing funds from cities that choose to tolerate these encampments.” 

The White House’s Domestic Policy Council is working closely with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on the issue, with Housing Secretary Ben Carson meeting with officials in Houston earlier this month as part of a push for federal action. The government is looking into repurposing federal buildings and former correctional facilities for housing the homeless, City Lab reported, which is a controversial approach being pushed by Robert Marbut, the White House’s lead on homelessness. 

In Houston, where local officials have succeeded in bringing down the homeless population by about 54 percent in recent years, the approach of Housing First has proven to work wonders. Houston is one of 24 cities singled out by the Trump administration as locations where federal intervention is necessary, and advocates fear federal officials will abandon the Housing First concept in favor of punitive measures. Part of the administration’s problem with cities’ approaches to homelessness involves increasingly visible homeless camps.

"TRUMP HAS TOLD FRIENDS THAT GUTTING MEDICARE COULD BE A FUN “SECOND-TERM PROJECT”"

What a fucking asshole:

When Donald Trump was running for president, he boldly proclaimed that he would not only balance the budget, he would eliminate the entire national debt, which at the time was approximately $19 trillion. 

That, of course, was about as likely to happen as Don Jr. going vegan or Ivanka publicly admitting that her father is a sick individual who needs help. 

Instead, President Trump has pushed the federal deficit to new heights thanks to a tax cut that did not, in fact, “pay for itself,” and a trade war that has turned out to be neither “good” nor “easy to win.” 

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office said that the federal deficit will reach $960 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, which ends September 30, and breach the $1 trillion mark in 2020. Previously those figures were expected to come in at $896 billion and $892 billion, respectively, but the damage from the president’s tariffs, along with a sharp falloff in revenue thanks to the 2017 tax cuts, have caused deficit projections to rise faster than expected. 

Incredibly, this is all happening against the backdrop of the longest economic expansion on record and the lowest jobless rate in 50 years, conditions that typically cause the budget deficit to shrink. And under the continued tutelage of Donald Trump, the New York Times reports, things are only expected to get worse: 

Mr. Trump has shown little inclination to prioritize deficit reduction, and has instead considered policies that would add to the debt. The president has mused in recent days about reducing the taxes that investors pay on capital gains, a move that is estimated to add $100 billion to deficits over the next decade. He has also talked about cutting payroll taxes, which could reduce revenues by $75 billion a year for every percentage point cut in payroll tax rates. The president also wants to make permanent many of the temporary individual tax cuts contained in the 2017 law, which are scheduled to expire in 2025. The budget office forecast assumes those cuts expire and tax revenues rise; if they do not, future deficit projections would be even larger.

The need to borrow more money has been aggravated by several bipartisan budget agreements to raise military and nondefense domestic discretionary spending. And it could increase if the trade war further chills business investment and consumer spending, resulting in slower economic growth and fewer tax dollars flowing to the Treasury Department. 

But while the nonpartisan CBO has placed the blame squarely on things like the trade war and tax cuts, Republicans—the ones who spent eight years under Obama screaming about fiscal responsibility and bankrupting our grandchildren—have an idea for how to deal with the situation that doesn’t involve taking tax cuts away from the wealthy or reeling in Tariff Man: 

Conservative groups—which largely supported Mr. Trump’s tax cuts—have pushed Congress to cut future deficits by reducing benefits for federal health care and retirement programs, like Medicare and Social Security. “Something must be done soon,” the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks said in a news release on Wednesday, “and that means taking a hard look at mandatory spending, the root cause of the United States’ fiscal woes.” 

While Republicans do not expect Trump to push for cuts while campaigning for reelection, they’ve apparently encouraged him to do so should he win a second term—a proposition to which President “I’m not going to cut Social Security, I’m not going to cut Medicare” has reportedly been receptive. “We’ve got to fix that,” Senator John Thune, the number two Republican in the Senate, told the Times. “It’s going to take presidential leadership to do that, and it’s going to take courage by the Congress to make some hard votes. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road. I hope in a second term, he is interested,” Thune said of Trump. “With his leadership, I think we could start dealing with that crisis. And it is a crisis.” Republicans, said Senator John Barrasso, who seems to regularly chat with the president, have “brought it up with President Trump, who has talked about it being a second-term project.”

Trump's Christmas Gift to Big Oil: Killing Hopes of Electric Car Tax Credit Extension

What a fucking asshole.

More Evil at the Border

The Trump administration has orphaned thousands and thousands of children and babies. They took them from their parents, locked them in cages, and then intentionally lost them. We still do not know where these children are.

And now they want to deport parents and relatives trying to claim children, which will scare these people from getting children. This is evil.

Also

"With flu season in full swing, the immigration crisis at the U.S-Mexico border has become even more dire for migrant children. Three children in U.S. custody have recently died of easily preventable flu-related illnesses."

and of course because they are assholes:
“Border Control has reportedly refused to let a group of physicians administer flu shots to migrant children in custody, even though some doctors have been passionately campaigning to provide this potentially lifesaving medical care.”

After Being Impeached, Trump Attacks Dead Democrat

On Thursday night, shortly after the House voted to impeach him, President Trump proved that point, revealing once again that a black hole exists where his own character should be. In a rage-fueled rally in Dingell’s home state, the president waged an attack on the dead congressman and the grieving widow who now holds his seat in Congress. Trump even joked that Dingell might be watching them from hell. As appalling as the comment itself was the laughter it got from Trump’s fawning supporters. The president’s statement was so vile that — for once — even Republican members of Congress condemned it and said he should apologize (which, of course, he didn’t).

Kentucky’s ex-governor pardoned a child rapist because the 9-year-old victim’s hymen was intact

Matt Bevin is an evil asshole.