There are some good things that Mr. Trump has done including the Abraham Accords, Project Warp Speed, discontinuing the minting of pennies, and securing the Southern Border. There are others that are “in process” and for which history will record its verdict.
For me, those accomplishments are overshadowed by the problems he has created.
This week in an interview with the NYT he said, “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
I want to look at his “morality” as his guide.
His personal life with his wives and mistresses is well documented, as is his treatment of vendors in his business. But I am reacting to a more basic morality. Mr. Trump believes in strength and power as the levers of success. He also seems to have agreed with his close advisor Elon Musk that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”. He also subscribes to his party’s belief that the country is composed of “givers” and “takers”. Thus, charity is a scam.
Mr. Trump likes to boast about his wealth; that he is worth over $10 Billion, making him one of the richest people in the world. However, in his personal life in NYC and Palm Beach he has never given money to support the arts, never given money to support cultural institutions, museums, or artists collectives, never given money to fund research institutions, hospitals, children’s clinics, or clinicians, never given money to underwrite new buildings at universities, to fund professor’s seats, to fund academic programs even in business, real estate, or marketing, never funded scholarship programs for underprivileged children, never funded soup kitchens, food banks, relief organizations, or poverty programs. In New York, the courts found his charitable Foundation so corrupt that not only did they disband it, but they also prohibited the entire Trump family from participating in the management of charities in the entire state.
For someone who believes that empathy is weakness, charity is a scam, and people just want to take your money rather than earn it for themselves, how would they administer a national government?
THE ARTS
During his first term, Mr. Trump annually proposed the full termination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
In his current term Mr. Trump issued executive orders to dismantle the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). He cancelled or terminated hundreds of existing grants and awards. He has fired a large fraction of the NEA, NEH and IMLS. He removed federal funding for the CPB, forcing its board to dissolve the organization. He has issued directives that federal funds cannot be used to promoted diversity, equity, inclusion, or “gender ideology”.
MUSEUMS
Mr. Trump issued executive orders calling for the elimination of seven federal agencies, including IMLS, thereby defunding U.S. libraries and museums.
Grants to museums and libraries that had been previously awarded were terminated affecting urban museums as well as rural historical societies.
The net result of those actions just this past year, has been that one-third of American museums lost government grants or contracts, forcing deferred construction projects, rehabilitation and repair plans, and programming to attract audiences including students, veterans and individuals with disabilities. These cuts forced most of these organizations to lay off staff, reducing their efficiencies.
HOSPITAL AND CLINICS
Mr. Trump and his directed administration heads terminated thousands of existing research grants worth billions of dollars. He attempted to cap research grant Indirect Costs (those costs from the host entity to cover overhead outlays like facilities, equipment, utilities, insurance, and administrative costs) from 28% to a maximum of 15%, jeopardizing academic research across the country.
Thousands of jobs at the NIH, the FDA, the CDC, and the NSF have been eliminated.
State Health departments were ordered to stop collecting critical public health data related to maternal health.
The President’s budget for the upcoming year proposed additional cuts including a 39% reduction for the NIH and 50% cuts to the CDC and would eliminate multiple smaller NIH institutes entirely.
EDUCATION
This year Mr. Trump’s Education Department, under his instructions, announced that it considers DEIA programs discriminatory and threatened to withhold federal funds from any state or district that continued to operate those programs. This was followed 2 months later with a letter threatening to withhold funds if states and districts did not vow to comply with the Administration’s new interpretation of civil rights laws.
You should take some time to look at the new Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) that allows an individual who donates up to $1,700 to organizations that offer vouchers to cover students’ private school tuition, to deduct 100% of those donations as a tax credit, a program that will cost the Federal Government over $50 Billion annually.
I think we all are aware of the billions of dollars that Colleges and Universities have had to pay back to the Federal Government to recover grants and funds that were already approved and accounted for by Congress.
The proposed “compact” that would have required universities to agree to the Administration’s ideology in order to receive preference in government funding, had few takers. But in the face of these threats, many Universities scrapped DEI programs that provided support for students based on race and other characteristics.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act limited graduate student borrowing and eliminated some of the programs providing loan forgiveness including forgiveness for graduates who take jobs with organizations the administration decides, on its own, as having “substantial illegal purpose”, because they help refugees or transgender youth.
And Mr. Trump has cut funds that helped schools serve students who are deaf or blind, funds bolstering the dwindling rural teacher workforce, and funding for Wi-Fi hotspots.
SCHOLARSHIP PROGAMS
Mr. Trump has cut funds for Minority-Serving Institutions like HBCUs, HSIs and Tribal Colleges.
He has cut Pell Grants along with cuts to Federal Work-Study programs.
Funding was cut for several other less well-known programs like TRIO, GEAR UP and CCAMPIS.
RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS AND FOOD BANKS
The biggest cuts to Relief Organizations and Food Assistance was the elimination of USAID and associated programs that have provided medical care and pharmaceuticals, including vaccines to countries economically unable to provide those things for their populations.
Domestically, he cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program), which provided protein, dairy, and fresh produce to local food banks. This was amplified by cuts of over $1 Billion from programs that helped schools and food banks purchase local foods.
He also made large cuts in the Supplemental Assistance Program (SNAP), removing nutritional support from millions of low-income families.
Meanwhile, large amounts of grains, produced in anticipation of foreign sales, were siloed by the government because orders never materialized. Those siloes rotted without being distributed to sources inside our own country that needed them.