The People’s Town Hall for Mike Rogers

Indivisible Auburn-Opelika held a town hall meeting for Representative Mike Rogers last night. Well over 100 of us showed up to listen to speakers and express our concerns and questions to the absent Congressman, represented by a cardboard figure.

The invited speakers described the impact of the Trump administration’s funding cuts locally, which have degraded university research, health policy, USAID program support in the U.S., disaster relief, and military preparedness.

I learned many specifics about how the administration’s actions are harming the state and local region and felt the satisfaction of showing up and being seen. “A people united cannot be defeated.”

After the event, I sent the following to Mike Rogers:

I was disappointed that you did not attend tonight’s town hall meeting in Opelika to hear and respond to your constituents’ concerns and questions. Since you weren’t there, I will relay my thoughts via this email.

I have a long, long list of concerns about President Trump’s administration and Republicans in Congress enabling his malfeasance. However, I’ll shorten my list to the following:

Despite the Republican talking points, the proposed budget that the House is developing will slash safety net programs like Medicaid. The cuts will hurt many Alabamians, pushing them even deeper into financial despair.

To propose such cuts to extend Donald Trump’s tax cuts without any tax increase on the richest Americans is unconscionable. Any member of Congress who votes for this draconian legislation seems either tone deaf or uncaring, arguably subservient to the oligarchs.

I ask you to vote against these cuts and, if you’re serious about reducing the deficit, to support tax increases on the wealthiest Americans.

Second, President Trump has called for ending the CHIPS and Science Act, claiming his tariffs will restore America’s manufacturing base, including semiconductors.

I’ve spent my 45-year career in the semiconductor industry and have witnessed the loss of U.S. leadership in the latest process technologies and wafer fabs. The CHIPS Act is a successful public-private partnership to establish process technology and manufacturing within the U.S. One focus is developing high-performance and trusted manufacturing capabilities for defense systems.

A new wafer fabrication facility is a multi-billion-dollar investment with a decades-long life cycle. Halting the investments started under the CHIPS Act because of the president’s ignorant, ill-conceived, and mercurial tariffs will undermine the country’s ability to invest in our semiconductor future.

Please oppose any legislation or executive order to curtail or cancel the CHIPS Act.

Restricting the Freedom to Think

We used to cherish freedom in this country, considering it a foundation for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No longer. Trump's America is looking more like Russia and China.

After decrying what they considered censorship of conservative ideas, conservatives are attempting to censor the ideas they find dissonant with their world views. They call these ideas divisive concepts, like racism and the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The library at the Naval Academy has now been purified.

Post by @garylerude@mindly.social

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Trump's Vulnerability Flows Downhill

In a recent Substack post, Timothy Snyder identifies a core weakness of President Trump that weakens America: his belief that everyone is ripping him off, or trying to unless he gets them first. It’s a zero-sum game.

This fueled his apparently long-held belief that a trade deficit is bad and tariffs are the solution, which led him to launch a trade war with virtually every country on the globe. Only the rising interest rate on 10-year Treasury notes prompted him to pause before we saw economic Armegadden.

Snyder’s article inspired me to write my Congressional representatives in Washington. I don’t expect to change their opinions, but I felt better hitting “send.”

Historian Timothy Snyder points to President Trump’s core vulnerability: He always thinks everyone is trying to rip him off. This deep-seated irrationality focused on the balance of trade caused the maelstrom around tariffs. Only the rising rates on 10-year Treasury notes prompted the president to largely retreat — except for tariffs on China, which won’t kiss the president’s ring.

Other than keeping reporters and cable and podcast pundits busy, the outcome of this insanity will be higher prices for consumers.

In a recent Substack article, Snyder writes, “We have thousands of years of political theory and indeed great literature to instruct us on this point: too much power brings out the worst in people — especially among the worst of people. As the founders understood, the purpose of the rule of law, of checks and balances, of regular elections, is to prevent precisely such a situation. Allowing our republic to be compromised has many costs, for example to our rights, and to our dignity. But it also has costs in a very basic economic sense. When you elevate the mad king, you elevate the madness.”

Are you willing to enable four years of madness?

Hands Off! Our Democracy

A throng of people, most carrying homemade signs, gathered and chanted at the G.W. Andrews Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Opelika last Saturday morning (April 5), one of more than 1,000 Hands Off! demonstrations protesting the policies of the Trump administration.

Hands off! was the appropriate epithet for opposing funding cuts to federal programs and the wholesale firing of federal employees.

I was so pleased to see this turnout and read of other protests around the country — even internationally.

Our Democracy Burns While the Republican Congress Watches

Inflicted by the daily horrors of the Trump administration, I finally channeled my anguish into words and sent the following to my Congressional Representative and Alabama's Senators.

Campaigning for president, Donald Trump promised to reduce inflation and the prices Americans pay for food and gas. He promised to end the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on his first day in office and bring peace to the Middle East.

After being sworn in, however, Donald Trump rewound the clock to a pre-Copernican view that puts the U.S. at the center of the universe. Reflecting this philosophy, he has launched a delusional trade war that will increase prices and inflation and likely start a recession. We’ve already seen the market respond, with companies losing trillions in market value.

To help him dismember the federal government, the president appointed Elon Musk to lead DOGE. Musk — either a government employee or not, depending on who asks the question — was neither on the ballot nor approved by the Senate like the president’s cabinet and other key officials.

Musk’s strategy of moving fast and breaking things may have worked for Twitter, yet it is dangerous when applied to the complex federal government — like giving Musk a scalpel and inviting him to do brain surgery. The impact on many Americans will at least be disruptive, if not tragic. These are our fellow Americans who are being sacrificed to provide tax cuts for the wealthy.

Musk’s power to access federal computer systems and terminate personnel without due process is egregious, especially considering his decisions reflect tremendous conflicts of interest. SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, X, cyber currency, and other Musk ventures benefit from this corruption. Add Musk flagrantly buying voters, if not votes, proves the Trump administration is converting America to a “democracy” of plutocrats.

The president has made corruption the coin of the realm, a quid-pro-quo currency of campaign contributions, meme coins, and intimidation in the form of executive orders, funding cuts, and social media threats.

Refusing to admit that Russia invaded Ukraine, as he refused to admit that he lost the 2020 election, the president showed his cards to Putin, displaying his longheld animosity for Volodymyr Zelenskyy and undermining the negotiating strength of the U.S.-European-Ukrainian alliance. Putin strung him along, ceding nothing. Only now does the president appear to be waking up, yet with a weak hand to play.

In the Middle East, the president’s peace plan is to evict more than a million Palestinians to who-knows-where, offering no compensation, so he can create a resort built atop the shallow graves of thousands of women and children.

Amidst all this chaos, the Republican-controlled Congress is content to let the administration neuter the legislative branch and convert America to an imperialist kingdom off to conquer Greenland, Panama, and Canada, while renaming landmarks to stroke the president’s ego.

The absurdity would be funny if not tragic.

Have you ever wondered what you would have done if you were in Congress when the Japanese were interned during World War II? You’re doing it now.