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Trump Budget Guts Programs for Poor and Elderly to Help Pay for Border Wall and Massive Defense Spending Increases

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Trump’s Budget is titled, “America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.” It does anything but.

President Donald Trump’s budget office director Mick Mulvaney says he “wrote it using the president’s own words,” reading his speeches and then “turned those policies into numbers.” 

The 2018 budget kills vital programs, like Meals on Wheels, that help the poor and elderly, while adding $54 billion to defense, and another $2.6 billion to help start construction of his infamous wall on the border of Mexico. And it looks to privatize parts of the government, like the Transportation Department’s vital air traffic control function.

$200 million is slashed from the Agriculture Dept.’s Women, Infants and Children nutrition assistance program, and another $200 million from the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program. 

The cuts are massive in number, scope, and impact. Generally, they are aimed at reducing or eliminating programs that perform research, assistance, or that fund the arts or science. Overall, the the Agriculture Dept. will have to eliminate 21% of its budget.

But even the president’s words are unable to save some programs. Despite promising voters he would cure diseases, his budget guts $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which will lose $15.1 billion in total, an 18% drop in funding. 

There are other contradictions that reveal Trump’s personal priorities. Betsy DeVos’ Dept. of Education loses $9.2 billion, a 14% drop, yet gets $1.4 billion for charter and private schools.

Gone entirely are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

On a percentage basis the Environmental Protection Agency is the hardest hit, with a devastating 31% slashing. The EPA’s Office of Research and Development gets gutted in half, and international climate change programs are just eliminated altogether.

NASA, while among the least hardest hit, also loses $102 million from climate change programs, another $115 million is cut from its Office of Education.

The State Dept. originally was to receive the greatest cut, a 37% decrease, but that will now be a 29% decrease – a $10.9 billion gutting. Gone entirely are its climate change prevention programs. Slashed is it U.N. peacekeeping funding. 

Over at the Dept. of Labor, like the Agriculture Dept., more than one-fifth of its budget will be eliminated. Programs to help low-income seniors, disadvantaged youth, and nonprofit groups will be cut or eliminated.

Politico observes Trump’s 2018 budget is “ripped from” Whit House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s “nationalistic playbook.”

For more, head over to the White House’s website, where you can read the budget, unsurpriingly titled, “America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.”

The Washington Post’s “What Trump cut in his budget,” is an excellent resource, as is the New York Times’ “Who Wins and Loses in Trump’s Proposed Budget.”

To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page.

Image by Peg Hunter via Flickr and a CC license

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BREAKING NEWS

Trump Indictment Is a Massive 34 Counts: CNN

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10 hours ago

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March 30, 2023

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When he appears in New York next week, Donald Trump will face a 34-count indictment.

CNN’s John Miller on-air Thursday evening announced, “I am told by my sources that this is 34 counts of falsification of business records, which is probably a lot of charges involving each document, each thing that was submitted, as a separate count.”

Attorney Tristan Snell, who assisted in the successful prosecution of the Trump University case for the New York Attorney General’s Office, responded via Twitter:

“This is WAY more than expected. If this is correct, it could mean that the indictment covers FAR more than the Stormy Daniels hush money — like Karen McDougal hush money or other hush money/catch-and-kill cases.”

READ MORE: Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Says It Is Coordinating With Trump to ‘Surrender’

“My hunch for a while,” Snell adds, “given [David] Pecker’s involvement and the drawn-out timetable of the indictment, plus the TWENTY interviews of Michael Cohen with the DA, showed that something far larger than Stormy might be in the works.”

“May still be wrong, of course. But 34 counts is a LOT!”

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News

Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Says It Is Coordinating With Trump to ‘Surrender’

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11 hours ago

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March 30, 2023

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Donald Trump’s attorneys were notified Thursday afternoon a Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict him on felony charges related to his alleged hush money payoff of a porn star he reported slept with.

The ex-president’ attorney recently said if indicted Trump would travel to New York to turn himself in.

The Office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has just issued a strongly-worded statement saying it is “coordinating” with Trump’s attorneys for his “surrender.”

“This evening we contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal. Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected,” the statement reads.

READ MORE: ‘You Can’t Stand on Fifth Avenue and Just Shoot Somebody’: Donald Trump Indicted – Legal Experts Respond

The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery posted the statement to Twitter.

NBC News explains the process, noting he is expected to be arraigned next week.

“After the indictment, Trump will be arrested and taken into custody. He will likely have a mug shot and fingerprints taken,” NBC reports. “Trump will then appear in court to be arraigned, where he will hear charges and enter a plea. Two sources familiar with the situation told NBC News that the former president is likely to be arraigned next week. Trump will either be jailed or released while pre-trial hearings take place.”

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'INDICTED FOR HIS BEHAVIOR'

‘You Can’t Stand on Fifth Avenue and Just Shoot Somebody’: Donald Trump Indicted – Legal Experts Respond

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March 30, 2023

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Just past 5:00 PM ET The New York Times broke the news that Donald Trump, the ex-president, had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on felony charges.

It is a historic moment.

Legal experts are weighing in to help guide Americans through an event that has never before happened in this country.

Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman says the fact that this is the first time in U.S. history a president is facing criminal charges is itself a problem.

“I think it would have not been a novel event,” Ackerman said on MSNBC, “if we had done this 49 years ago with Richard Nixon, and he had not been pardoned, this will not be a big event [that] it is today.”

READ MORE: New Poll Sends Trump Damning Message About 2024 if He’s Criminally Indicted

“Everybody should be held accountable,” Ackerman added, citing former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s earlier remarks. Cohen testified repeatedly before the Manhattan grand jury that indicted Trump late Thursday afternoon after a three-hour session.

Ackerman lamented that despite over 30 people being indicted during Watergate, “Richard Nixon was pardoned, he wasn’t held accountable.”

“I think this is very important,” Ackerman continued, “establishing a principle, a line in the sand, that even if you’re the President of the United States, and you commit a crime, you can’t stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and just shoot somebody.”

Ackerman was referring to Trump’s infamous comments during the 2016 election, when he bragged he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Attorney and civil rights activist Maya Wiley, also on MSNBC, said, “It’s important and sobering that we had somebody who had the highest office of this country who has now ben indicted for his behavior, his acts, in order to win that office, but also faces what are more shoes that will drop, I believe.”

“It is a sobering moment for this country, that we are witnessing this happened to somebody who was entrusted with such power who has now had a jury of his peers, because that is what a grand jury also is, say we believe he had to face the music.”

READ MORE: Here’s How Five Republicans in Congress Are Responding to the Mass Shooting of 3 Children and 3 Adults in Nashville (Video)

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now a professor of law, called this a “moment where we would do well to seriously assess who we are as Americans and who we are not as Americans, because we re all so familiar with Donald Trump’s tactics.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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