CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Trump Destroys the Careers of Millions of Americans Helping People

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

On my radio show/podcast—the Ralph Nader Radio Hour—interviews of knowledgeable people have detailed the ravages by the cruel, serial law violator, Tyrant Trump, inflicted on millions of Americans. Still, the report from the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg produced a jolting Common Dreamsheadline: Trump is Dismantling U.S. Democracy at a Speed ‘Unprecedented in Modern History.’

The report described the first year of Trump’s second term as achieving in one year what budding autocracies take a decade to accomplish, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d’état.”

To wreck, weaken, and endanger our country, Trump disrupts the lives of millions of civil servants, contractors, small businesses and their families. He fired or forced out hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants staffing programs that protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of tens of millions of Americans, relying on food supplements, Medicaid, government-backed loans, and innumerable other social safety nets.

Trump has especially targeted law enforcement programs directed at enforcing worker and consumer safety, financial protections, and environmental health against toxic corporations. He is taking federal cops off the corporate crime beat.

Here are some specifics. Qualified foreign doctors have had their visas rejected. The U.S. has a doctor shortage, especially in rural areas. These physicians were blocked by Trump from extending care in areas with no doctors.

Huge, arbitrary cuts for scientific research have closed or curtailed labs, left individual scientists pursuing crucial discoveries to save........

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