Trump Tracker: 5 Ways Trump Has Changed America (Patreon)

Trump has been in office for a little over two years, and somehow people still think I’m exaggerating when I point out how awful he is. Let us count 5 ways.

1) Government Spending

In March, Trump requested a 4.75 trillion budget, to include a 5% military increase and 8.6 billion for the border wall. So Trump wants to increase the military budget and build his border wall without adding to the national deficit, right? This means slashing the budgets of key programs. He asked for a 1.9 trillion dollar budget cut for medicare and medicaid, even though he previously said he’d leave these programs intact. He also plans to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31% in the face of climate change. Keep in mind that Trump already announced he was withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Agreement, a multi-country agreement to combat climate change. This will take effect in 2020, one day after the presidential election results are announced. This goes hand in hand with a general decrease in federal environmental concern, exemplified by the fact that at the end of December 2018, the EPA abandoned rules that regulated the highly toxic coal industry. This will obviously impact the environment, and the health of low income people who usually live in proximity to coal mines. 

Meanwhile, the education department, under Betsy DeVos, proposed reducing its budget by 12%, or 8.8 billion dollars. Even while many public schools currently struggle to meet the needs of their students, primarily ones serving low income black and brown kids, DeVos, and the administration, are proponents of privately funded scholarships that individuals and businesses would get a 100% tax credit for, and could cost average American citizens up to 5 billion dollars in lost tax revenue. That could money could be used on other programs, instead of going back to the wealthy. But that's not it. Trump proposed work requirements for food stamps, federal housing, and medicaid, saying it would reduce spending by 327 billion over a decade because many people currently receiving benefits would be disqualified from them. This is troubling because vast amounts of research have shown that welfare programs that emphasize work aren’t effective, and harm the disabled, elderly, and those who can’t find more than part time work/ In all, Trump’s budget proposal seeks to cut more than 24 programs, including an after school program for low income students and public service loan forgiveness. 

Further Reading:

• Betsy DeVos's Claim About Public funding for 'Education Freedom Scholarships" (Salvador Rizzo)
• As affordable housing crisis worsens, Trump proposes more cuts (Patrick Sisson)
• Trump’s 2020 budget proposal seriously cuts the nation’s safety net (Tara Golshan)

2) The Economy

Unemployment is at one of its lowest rates since the 1960s and about 5 million new jobs have been created with Trump as president. Before you celebrate this, keep in mind that Trump reversed Obama’s expanded overtime pay. In 2014 Obama proposed that workers earning up to $47,000 a year could earn overtime pay, or 50% extra hourly pay over 40 hours in a work week. As a result, powerful and stingy businesses joined 21 republican controlled states to sue Obama’s administration before the rule went into place in 2016, meaning the rule was put on hold. Texas ruled against the rule in 2017, saying such a change was out of the power of the Department of Labor. When Trump’s labor secretary Alexander Acosta came in, he didn’t challenge the ruling and instead mandated that under Trump, only workers who earn less than $23,000 can earn overtime. For people on the edge of poverty earning a little bit more than $23,000 a year, overtime is off limits for them. Another way Trump has impacted the economy? Of course, the 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut that slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. So companies raking in billions of dollars a year paid the same tax rate as people earning about 38-77K a year. It was even reported that 60 Fortune 500 companies that earned over 79 billion in 2018 paid ZERO dollars in federal taxes.

Further Reading:

• Obama Expanded Overtime Pay to 4 Million Workers. Now Trump Is Scaling That Back (Alexia Fernandez Campbell)

3) The Courts

During the Obama presidency, Mitch McConnell blocked dozens of Obama’s nominees for federal courts by refusing to hold senate votes. For instance, in 2016 Justice Antonin Scalia died and McConnell used his power as senate leader to keep the seat vacant and not hold a hearing for Obama’s liberal nominee, Merrick Garland. When Trump became president he nominated Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, providing a conservative majority on the supreme court. But that’s not all. Trump has appointed 83 judges to appeal and district courts, most of them white males, in a little over 2 years. He has 70 more nominees waiting in line. Filling the courts with young conservative white men of course plays the role of upholding white supremacy and dismantling women rights, along with implementing christian dominionism. According to one study, Trump's picks are 20% more conservative than George Bush's. 

Further Reading:

• Study: Trump’s judicial appointees are more conservative than those of past Republican presidents  (Li Zhou)
• Trump's conservative judges begin takeover of federal appeals courts (Richard Wolf)

4) Reproductive Rights

Speaking of women’s rights, thanks to the conservative majority on the supreme court and our anti-abortion vice president hand-picked by Trump, numerous states are trying their luck at destroying the effectiveness of Roe vs Wade or even overturning it altogether, by introducing heartbeat bills that bar women from getting abortions after about 6 weeks. You can learn more about this topic in this JSYK video, The Mounting Threat of Heartbeat Abortion Bills. 

Further Reading:

• Trump's anti-abortion agenda emboldened an all-out war on women's rights in dozens of state (Jill Flipovic)

5) Bigotry

The New Zealand shooter who murdered over 50 people in a mosque called Trump a “renewed symbol of white identity.” But the bigotry he’s inspired of course runs rampant here in America too. Glazing over the fact that white supremacist conspiracy theorists like Steve Bannon were allowed to serve in Trump’s administration, The Washington Post found that the counties that hosted at least one of Trump’s 275 rallies in 2016 saw a 226% increase in reported hate crimes, compared to counties who didn’t host one. Trump has not denounced white nationalism, not that it would really even matter if he did, as much of his support comes from avowed white supremacists. When asked if he saw a rise in white nationalism in America, Trump said, “I don’t know really, I think it’s a small group of people that have very very serious problems.” 

Further Reading:

• Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes 

Have you noticed other ways Trump has changed the country? Comment below!