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Clarksburg, West Virginia has lead service lines scattered throughout the city, which has caused elevated levels of lead in some children’s blood, resulting in health issues like developmental delays.

In 2023, the environmental-justice division of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced a new program designed to increase lead testing for local children and families so that officials could catch elevated lead levels early and prevent long-term health complications. Partnering with cash-strapped state agencies, the EPA bought kits that could measure lead levels in children with just a finger prick, gave out gift cards to incentivize testing, and offered testing opportunities in offices where families picked up benefits and received breast-feeding support.

The program invested $150,000 in lead-testing kits for Harrison County, where Clarksburg is located, which raised testing rates in children from about 8% to 41%, says Camilla McMillen-Haught, director of Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) Nutrition in six West Virginia counties, including Harrison. Children with high levels of lead were then targeted for health interventions like dietary changes that would reduce their risk of long-term problems.

The future of the program is now uncertain, due to the Trump Administration’s focus on rooting out efforts to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental-justice initiatives. A proposed expansion of the lead-testing program to states like Ohio is threatened as well.

An EPA staffer connected to the initiative was put on administrative leave in early February as part of the Trump Administration’s purge of federal government workers. The person told TIME they were pulled into a meeting and told they had 15 minutes to log out of their work email and settle their affairs. (The staffer asked not to be named for fear of being fired permanently.) An additional 167 members of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights were put on administrative leave, according to the agency, many after receiving emails that said they were identified as spending more than half their time on environmental-justice initiatives.

These moves were part of President Trump’s executive order, titled “Ending Radical and Waste Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which he issued on his first day in office to target DEI and environmental-justice programs. (A Maryland judge on Feb. 21 largely blocked the Administration from carrying out much of the DEI executive order, though staff members and recipients of grants have not yet seen changes since then.) The Administration’s goal, it said, was to slash spending and end initiatives that single out minorities for help.

In the directive, Trump criticized his predecessor’s own executive order seeking to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities as “illegal and immoral discrimination.” New EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video posted on X Feb. 12 that “the days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over.” He added, on Feb. 22, "UPDATE: I just cancelled another 21 wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants, with the help of our amazing @DOGE team, racking up $67m more in savings!"

But many of the environmental-justice programs targeted by the new Administration’s staff cuts and funding freezes do not benefit minorities or left-leaning environmental groups, according to Adam Ortiz, who until January served as the EPA’s Regional Administrator for Region 3, which includes Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Often they help poor, white communities in conservative areas—places that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

Clarksburg, a beneficiary of the West Virginia lead-testing program, is a former manufacturing hub that is 90% white and has a poverty rate of 23.2%, about double the national average. Harrison County, where it is located, voted for Trump by a margin of 40 percentage points in 2024.

“These are communities that had the most hope in this Administration and are now feeling the most suffering,” says Jacob Israel Hannah, the CEO of Coalfield Development Corp., a nonprofit that does workforce development in 21 counties in West Virginia. Coalfield Development had won nearly $700 million in federal funding for projects across the state. Over half of its budget has come from federal grants in the past few years as the Biden Administration funneled “unprecedented” amounts of funding to Appalachia, Hannah says. But nearly all that money has been frozen by federal spending pauses targeting DEI, environmental justice, and clean-energy initiatives.

When asked about the idea that ending DEI and environmental justice activities hurts communities that supported Trump, an EPA spokesperson said in a statement to TIME that it is “working diligently” to implement President Trump’s executive orders. It placed the 168 Office of Environmental Justice employees on administrative leave after EPA career staffers determined that their functions “did not relate to the agency’s statutory duties,” the statement said. The agency is “in the process of evaluating new structure and organization to ensure we are meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment for all Americans,” according to the statement.

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, wrote in an email to TIME that “protecting the civil rights and expanding opportunities for all Americans is a key priority of the Trump Administration, which is why he took decisive actions to terminate unlawful DEI preferences.”

Funding freezes are another way that the Trump Administration has tried to weed out programs promoting DEI and environmental justice. One of the grants Coalfield Development Corp. won—worth around $130 million—would have created 1,000 new jobs by training unemployed coal workers to become solar installers and then to install 250 megawatts of solar on closed coal mines, says Hannah. But now, he says, when Coalfield staffers log into funding portals for the Department of Energy, the EPA, and the Department of Labor, they receive a message that their grants are “under review” and that they are not able to access the money they were promised. The grant applications included the term environmental justice because they would have helped underserved communities access jobs and clean power, Hannah says. If the grant goes away, “you will see the loss of what would have been over 1,000 new jobs in Appalachia,” Hannah says.

While some of the beneficiaries of environmental-justice projects have been low-income communities of color in cities, others are struggling white communities in Appalachia. The Biden Administration mandated that 40% of many of its climate and clean energy funds flow to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.” It also set aside $500 million for Appalachian Community Capital to launch a Green Bank for Rural America that would have prioritized investments in 582 counties across the region.

“The important thing to understand about all the grants at the EPA is that they prioritized reaching the communities most overburdened by pollution,” says Zealan Hoover, who was until recently the Director of Implementation at the agency, overseeing $100 billion in funding. “In every state, there was a wide range of communities receiving funding.” That includes Alaska Native communities, rural communities in the Southeast and Gulf Coast, and places across the country that have disproportionately high energy costs, Hoover says.

Another nonprofit that saw its federal funding frozen is LiKEN (Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network), which works in Kentucky and West Virginia to help people in rural areas join global markets for sustainable agriculture and carbon capture. LiKEN received $3.1 million from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Landowners Support Program from the Inflation Reduction Act. It hired 10 staff to open satellite offices in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia that were set to become local hubs where the community could gather, says Betsy Taylor, the group’s executive director.

On Feb. 5, the organization received a form email from the U.S. Forest Service informing the group that its federal funds “are on hold until further notice.” LiKEN had to borrow money from private donors and furlough five staff. Taylor says she has a suspicion of why the money was frozen: “Diversity, equity, and inclusion. It was about serving underserved communities.” The vast majority of these communities were white, Taylor says.

The Administration’s funding freeze hits communities that would have benefited at a time of urgent need. Swaths of Appalachia suffered devastating floods on Feb. 15. “One of the things that has been surreal is the contrast between the shock that the government would not be honoring contracts that were congressionally approved, and the heroism of people on the ground who lost income rushing to communities affected by the floods,” Taylor says.

Many of the programs whose funding was paused or whose federal staff were placed on administrative leave focused on providing access to clean drinking water and functioning wastewater treatment plants, says Ortiz, the former EPA regional administrator. One project, spearheaded by a staffer now on administrative leave, according to Ortiz, sought to relocate a wastewater treatment plant in Richwood, W.V., that has been basically inoperable since a 2016 flood.

“Our environmental-justice work was really focused on places that historically didn’t have the ability to match funds or pay loans back,” Ortiz says. “For the first time since the 1930s and 1940s, these communities were receiving serious investments to rebuild critical infrastructure.”

Amid Elon Musk’s whirlwind campaign to cut thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in government services in the name of efficiency, a bombshell report Wednesday revealed a staggering amount of taxpayer cash that goes directly to him.

The richest man in the world is one of the biggest earners paid from public money, the Washington Post found.

A deep dive into government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits found the South African billionaire has reaped $38 billion dollars of government cash.

The Post reported the payments started more than 20 years ago, as Musk secured a low-interest loan from the Energy Department as CEO of the then-struggling Tesla. That department is one of many now hit by mass layoffs and cuts led by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

The Post spoke to unnamed sources from inside the government to back up its story.

Almost two-thirds of the cash came in the past five years, according to the report. Just last year, at least $6.3 billion was committed to Musk’s companies. They included cash to build a Tesla factory and NASA contracts to his company SpaceX to aid the moon program.

“The total amount is probably larger: This analysis includes only publicly available contracts, omitting classified defense and intelligence work for the federal government,” the Post reported.

It went on, “The Post found nearly a dozen other local grants, reimbursements and tax credits where the specific amount of money is not public.”

The report also found 52 contracts with seven government agencies that are set to pay another $111.8 billion over the next few years. All seven agencies have come under DOGE's microscope.

While Musk is not a paid government employee, he was a massive funder of now-President Donald Trump’s election campaign and is now a central part of his advisory team. He also heads DOGE, which he claims will slash trillions of dollars in government waste.

Musks’s part in the Trump administration has raised many red flags among onlookers about major conflicts of interest.

“Not every entrepreneur at this scale has been this dependent on federal money — certainly not Nvidia, not Microsoft, nor Amazon, nor Meta,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management.

Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that President Donald Trump’s administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows.

The Department of Government Efficiency, run by Trump adviser Elon Musk, published an updated list Monday of nearly 2,300 contracts that agencies terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 794 in all, are expected to yield no savings.

That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.

“It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.”

An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration says it’s targeting fraud, waste and abuse in the government. DOGE said Monday that its cost-cutting efforts have saved an estimated $65 billion, including canceling leases and grants, cutting employees and selling assets. That figure has not been independently verified.

Some of the canceled contracts were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased and interns who have come and gone. Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to The Associated Press, Politico and other media services that the Republican administration said it would discontinue.

Other canceled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a contract in September to purchase and install office furniture at various branches. While the contract does not expire until later this year, federal records show the agency had already agreed to spend the maximum $567,809 with a furniture company.

The U.S. Agency for International Development negotiated a $145,549 contract last year to clean the carpet at its headquarters in Washington. But the full amount had already been obligated to a firm that is owned by a Native American tribe based in Michigan.

Another already-spent $249,600 contract went to a Washington, D.C., firm to help prepare the Department of Transportation for the recent transition from President Joe Biden’s administration to Trump’s.

“It’s too late for the government to change its mind on many of these contracts and walk away from its payment obligation,” said Tiefer, who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tiefer said DOGE appeared to be taking a “slash and burn” approach to cutting contracts, which he said could damage the performance of government agencies. He said savings could be made instead by working with agency contracting officers and inspectors general to find efficiencies, an approach the administration has not taken.

DOGE says the overall contract cancellations are expected to save $9.6 billion, an amount that has been questioned as inflated by independent experts.

Some of the canceled contracts were intended to modernize and improve the way government works, which would seem to be at odds with DOGE’s cost-cutting mission.

One of the largest, for instance, went to a consulting firm to help carry out a reorganization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which led the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The maximum $13.6 million had already been obligated to Deloitte Consulting LLP for help with the restructuring, which included closing several research offices.

On February 3, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), saying the United States will have one of the largest funds in the world. That requires raising trillions of dollars very quickly. For context, Norway’s fund is currently worth $1.8 trillion U.S. dollars. Sovereign wealth funds are typically financed with surplus revenue from trade or natural resource development. Given that the United States is roughly $36 trillion in debt, experts question where the money would come from. The Trump administration seems to be signaling that selling out and selling off the nation’s public lands to the highest bidder might provide the necessary funding. Selling federal public lands would turn America’s treasured places into a financial asset for the Trump administration without the need for surplus revenue, making it a potentially enticing idea for the administration. What is a sovereign wealth fund and how would it be funded?

An SWF is a state-owned investment fund made up of money generated by the government, often derived from a nation’s natural resource revenues, budget surpluses, or foreign currency reserves. President Trump’s order charges the secretaries of the treasury and commerce departments with developing a plan for finding the money needed within 90 days of its signing. At the signing ceremony, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained where some of the money might come from: “We are going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people. We are going to put the assets to work.”

What exactly does this mean? Doug Burgum, President Trump’s secretary of the interior, explained that the nation’s parks, public lands, and natural resources—including timber, fossil fuels, and minerals—are assets on “the nation’s balance sheet.” Burgum speculated in his confirmation hearing that federal lands could be worth as much as $200 trillion. He argued that the U.S. government, run like a business, should know the value of the corporation’s assets and use those assets “to get a return for the American people.” Under Trump’s proposal, the value of public lands would be determined by their potential market value to grow an SWF, and not by their value to hunters and fishermen; family ranchers; and communities that rely on clean water and air as well as jobs and income that come from natural resource development, recreation, and tourism. Selling off America’s public lands

Simply increasing the leasing of natural resources will not be enough to seed an SWF. Leasing for oil and gas, timber, mining, and grazing brought in less than $17 billion in 2024. Oil and gas production is already at record levels, and the oil and gas industry has said it will not increase drilling substantially to avoid hurting its profit margins. To generate hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars, the Treasury Department may find that selling public lands to the highest bidders is the only way to raise that kind of money quickly.

Selling public lands has long been on the agenda of the antiparks caucus, and some Republicans in Congress and in states have worked to undermine federal ownership of lands. For example, Utah’s governor asked the Supreme Court to rule federal land ownership unconstitutional; the court declined to hear the case in January 2025. The Republican Party platform includes selling federal lands for housing development. The U.S. House of Representatives adopted new rules that free it from having to consider the value of public lands if they are sold. These rules would make it easier for the Trump administration to give public lands over to the Treasury and Commerce departments to see how much money they could make to grow the SWF.

Land sell-off and the privatization of public lands to this extent would deprive Americans and local economies of the access to nature and resources that sustain them. Giving money managers and financiers control over land management is more than just a land grab; it is an attack on the democratic and meritocratic ideals that make America great. The future of U.S. public lands—and the values they represent—depends on the willingness of Congress and the American public to stand up and defend public ownership and multiple uses, including for conservation, recreation, and wonder. An investment risk waiting to happen

Once an SWF has accumulated wealth, that wealth is invested in stocks, bonds, real estate, and other financial instruments to earn even more money. Without proper sideboards between politicians and investment decisions, the SWF would likely serve to enrich Trump and his allies—not the American public. For example, David Sacks, Trump’s White House crypto czar, suggested that the SWF could buy bitcoin, which would reward campaign donors by inflating asset values and exerting ever more control over the nation’s economy. The secretaries of the treasury and commerce departments have yet to demonstrate that they would constrain the president’s or their own political influence over the SWF by setting up independent fund managers, auditors, or appropriate firewalls between government and private interests. A better way

Creating an SWF to use as a tool is not an inherently bad idea. In fact, it could be designed to solve the real problems rural and energy-dependent communities face. A lot has changed since the 1970s, when timber harvests, coal mines, and grazing permits sustained family wage jobs; taxes and royalties from those activities paid for good local schools and improved public safety; and local businesses thrived. Today, even where natural resource activity is booming, a basic social contract has been broken: Tax cuts, automation, and increasing corporate ownership mean leasing on federal lands does not deliver the same benefits to local workers, businesses, and schools as it used to.

An SWF could be part of the solution for communities left behind by changes in the United States and the global economy. For example, the Center for American Progress has suggested that the federal government establish an energy SWF modeled after the ones in Norway and New Mexico. This proposal would end direct oil and gas revenue-sharing payments and replace them with a permanent solution. A one-time, up-front endowment to capture and save fossil fuel revenue and provide stable and permanent distributions to communities. The ultimate result would be an immediate, predictable, and permanent source of income for resource-dependent communities as they transition—and it would not cost U.S. taxpayers anything.

These funds are designed to build intergenerational wealth and provide stable and permanent revenue that state and local governments depend on to fund schools, sheriff’s departments, public libraries, parks, and emergency services. With proper firewalls between land managers and fund managers, an SWF could be designed to build wealth when resources are extracted from public lands and keep public lands in public hands.

In New Mexico, the state controls two permanent funds built up from oil royalties and taxes; these SWFs will fully decouple the state’s budgets from annual oil and gas revenue by 2039. That means New Mexico would be the only oil-producing state in the United States that could transition away from fossil fuels without affecting the budget of local schools and other state services. Stable and predictable revenue from the permanent funds allows the state to reposition its lands to benefit the economy in multiple ways by taking a portfolio approach to land management. The state lands could be used for conservation; recreation; access to hunting, fishing, and bird watching; and energy development. The federal government would benefit from a similar management structure. Federal public lands have multiple values, and protecting multiple uses creates a more diverse and resilient—and larger—economy. Conclusion

President Trump’s proposed SWF has opened the doors to the idea of reforming the fiscal relationship between public lands and the states and communities who rely on them for revenue, jobs, recreation, clean air and water, resilience against natural disasters, and much more. The secretaries of the treasury and interior have stated clearly that public lands would be monetized—including selling out and selling off to the highest bidder—to raise substantial new revenue. Handing over public lands to an SWF may also change who benefits. To grow an SWF, royalties that currently are shared with state and local governments could be redirected into the SWF. A better approach would keep public lands in public hands and work on solutions that deliver the predictable and fair compensation state and local governments deserve. An energy and natural resources SWF could achieve these goals in a way that works for industry, state and local governments, and all Americans who use and love public lands.

Link above goes to the Daily Kos post that discovered the scrubbing. Here's the text of the original article:

Former Intelligence Officer Claims KGB Recruited Trump

Isabel Van Brugen – The Daily Beast – 21 February 2025

A former Soviet intelligence officer has alleged that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.”

Alnur Mussayev, 71, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, made the explosive claim in a Facebook post on Thursday. He claimed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of its key objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”

Mussayev wrote that in 1987 “our directorate recruited Donald Trump, a 40-year-old American businessman, under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

He reiterated that the department specialized in recruiting spies and intelligence sources from the West, asserting once again that Trump had been brought into the fold.

“I hope I’ll survive a third assassination attempt,” he said in a comment below his post.

He made another shocking allegation in another comment, saying: “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates.”

Mussayev’s allegations, while unfounded, add to ongoing speculation about Trump’s connections to Russia. Trump’s first visit to Moscow as a real estate developer in 1987 drew intense scrutiny and speculation that the trip was arranged by the KGB for dubious reasons.

According to Politico, in 1985, the KGB updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed among the agency, advising case officers what to look for in a successful recruitment operation.

The document instructed agents to target “prominent figures in the West” with the goal of drawing them “into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”

Trump has denied any improper ties to Moscow or collusion with President Vladimir Putin.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment.

U.S. officials have also expressed concerns about Trump’s relationship with Putin.

Anthony Scaramucci who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, said during an episode of “The Rest Is Politics: US” podcast with co-host Katty Kay on Friday that he thinks there is a mysterious “hold” on the president.

Scaramucci did not elaborate on what he believes that “hold” might be, adding only: “I don’t know why it’s like this. [H.R.] McMaster couldn’t figure it out, [James] Mattis couldn’t figure it out, [John] Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”

"Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity."

-Karl Marx

Trump finally decided to end the GOP’s internal quarreling on how to pass his budget—and broke a huge promise on Medicaid in the process.

For months, Republicans have been split on whether to split Trump’s massive budget agenda on the military, border security, and tax cuts for corporations into multiple, incremental bills (Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham’s preferred method) or combine them into one “big beautiful bill” (the House’s preferred method).

The president settled that debate with a Truth Social post on Wednesday morning.

“The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM … unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” the president wrote. “We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’ It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

But the House bill Trump endorsed breaks his promise to never touch Medicaid, levying a whopping $2 trillion cut to the budget, including an expected $880 billion cut to the critical health program, in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.*

“Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something. It’s going to be strengthened. Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched,” Trump claimed as recently as Tuesday, during his and Elon Musk’s sitdown with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

Some moderate Republicans have already come out against a bill that would slash Medicaid, which could leave thousands of their constituents without reliable access to care.

“​​I ran for Congress under a promise of always doing what is best for the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Representative Rob Bresnahan wrote on X last Friday. “If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it.”

Fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids began to spread the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time. Posts on social media and Reddit claimed that ICE had already been spotted in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff, where Latino immigrants began to settle in large numbers in the 1970s and have profoundly shaped the culture of the vibrant community.

That same Tuesday morning, an X account with over 17,000 followers named GlomarResponder made an ominous post. “Yeah, I’m in a courthouse wating [sic] on warrants,” GlomarResponder wrote. “Turns out there’s a lot of bitch work to be done to make mass deportations happen.” One day prior, GlomarResponder had posted that he “Can confirm all of those,” regarding a list of cities where ICE was expected to begin deportation operations the next day. “May have a betting pool to see who can guess which one I’m at on any particular day, based on the news,” GlomarResponder wrote.

These were but the latest posts that GlomarResponder has made over the years that suggest the operator of the account is an ICE employee. GlomarResponder has also routinely expressed blatantly racist and anti-immigrant views. Through an extensive review of GlomarResponder’s X posts, publicly available documents, and other social media profiles and posts, the Texas Observer has identified the operator of GlomarResponder

Donald Trump is arguing to the Supreme Court that they have already given him “unrestricted power” to fire people.

The White House’s acting solicitor general, Sarah M. Harris, cited the Supreme Court’s July decision giving the president near-total immunity in an appeal Sunday asking the high court to overturn a lower court order blocking Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger. The office is an independent agency whose mission is to safeguard whistleblowers in the government and to enforce some ethics laws.

In July, the Supreme Court ruled that “the President’s management of the executive branch requires him to have unrestricted power to remove them [agency heads] in their most important duties,” Harris said in her filing, arguing that the lower court’s order was “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrant[ed] immediate relief.”

“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” the filing states.

Was the president having “unrestricted power” the intention of the 6-3 Supreme Court majority when it ruled in Trump’s favor on presidential immunity last year? At the time, Trump was trying to skirt federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, an effort that ultimately paid off.

Now, this legal filing not only seeks to cement unlimited presidential power in firing employees, but also challenges Congress’s authority to limit the president’s mass purges. Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government would get a big boost if he gets a favorable ruling from his conservative friends on the Supreme Court. The question is whether they think a president should have those powers, or if they think the presidency needs some guardrails.

Many people across the United States are despondent about the new president – and the threat to democracy his rise could represent. But they shouldn’t be. At no time in recorded history have people been more equipped to effectively resist injustice using civil resistance.

Today, those seeking knowledge about the theory and practice of civil resistance can find a wealth of information at their fingertips. In virtually any language, one can find training manuals, strategy-building tools, facilitation guides and documentation about successes and mistakes of past nonviolent campaigns.

Material is available in many formats, including graphic novels, e-classes, films and documentaries, scholarly books, novels, websites, research monographs, research inventories, and children’s books. And of course, the world is full of experienced activists with wisdom to share.

The United States has its own rich history – past and present – of effective uses of nonviolent resistance. The technique established alternative institutions like economic cooperatives, alternative courts and an underground constitutional convention in the American colonies resulting in the declaration of independence. In 20th century, strategic nonviolent resistance has won voting rights for women and for African Americans living in the Jim Crow south.

Nonviolent resistance has empowered the labor movement, closed down or cancelled dozens of nuclear plants, protected farm workers from abuse in California, motivated the recognition of Aids patients as worthy of access to life-saving treatment, protected free speech, put climate reform on the agenda, given reprieve to Dreamers, raised awareness about economic inequality, changed the conversation about systemic racism and black lives and stalled construction of an oil pipeline on indigenous lands in Standing Rock.

In fact, it is hard to identify a progressive cause in the United States that has advanced without a civil resistance movement behind it.

This does not mean nonviolent resistance always works. Of course it does not, and short-term setbacks are common too. But long-term change never comes with submission, resignation, or despair about the inevitability and intractability of the status quo.

And among the different types of dissent available (armed insurrection or combining armed and unarmed action), nonviolent resistance has historically been the most effective. Compared with armed struggle, whose romanticized allure obscures its staggering costs, nonviolent resistance has actually been the quickest, least costly, and safest way to struggle. Moreover, civil resistance is recognized as a fundamental human right under international law.

Nonviolent resistance does not happen overnight or automatically. It requires an informed and prepared public, keen to the strategy and dynamics of its political power. Although nonviolent campaigns often begin with a committed and experienced core, successful ones enlarge the diversity of participants, maintain nonviolent discipline and expand the types of nonviolent actions they use.

They constantly increase their base of supporters, build coalitions, leverage social networks, and generate connections with those in the opponent’s network who may be ambivalent about cooperating with oppressive policies.

Crucially, nonviolent resistance works not by melting the heart of the opponent but by constraining their options. A leader and his inner circle cannot pass and implement policies alone. They require cooperation and obedience from many people to carry out plans and policies.

In the US on Tuesday, dozens of lawmakers have said they will boycott confirmation votes for Trump nominees. Numerous police departments countrywide have announced that they will not comply with unethical federal policies (particularly regarding deportations). And the federal government employs more than 3 million civil servants – people on whose continued support the US government relies to implement its policies. Many such civil servants have already begun important conversations about how to dissent from within the administration. They, too, provide an important check on power.

The Women’s March on Washington and its affiliated marches – which may have been the largest single-day demonstration in US history – show a population eager and willing to show up to defend their rights.

Of course, nonviolent resistance often evokes brutality by the government, especially as campaigns escalate their demands and use more disruptive techniques. But historical data shows that when campaigns are able to prepare, train, and remain resilient, they often succeed regardless of whether the government uses violence against them.

Historical studies suggest that it takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships. If that can be true in Chile under Gen Pinochet and Serbia under Milosevic, a few million Americans could prevent their elected government from adopting inhumane, unfair, destructive or oppressive policies – should such drastic measures ever be needed.