More from the article...

... When Aganetha Unger pulled up her large, white van to the emergency measles testing site, several of her eight children were coughing.

"We had some sickness in the house, not very bad, but some fever, some cough," said Unger, who is Mennonite. One child, she said, had a fever of 103 degrees.

Her youngest getting tested was a 2-month-old, wrapped tightly in a pink blanket on her mom's lap. When the EMS team swabbed her nose, she didn't cry. ...

It was Thursday, eight days after the Texas Department of State Health Services first reported a measles outbreak on the rural, western edge of the state.

On Friday, the number of confirmed cases rose to 49, up from 24 earlier in the week, the state health department said. The majority of those cases are in Gaines County, which borders New Mexico.

Most cases are in school-age kids, and 13 have been hospitalized. All are unvaccinated against measles, which is one of the most contagious viruses in the world. ...

... "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." ...

Which country is Pres Trump trying to save?

The country that White Male Christian Nationalists want?

@#34 ... who's promises have turned to nothing. ...

You mean Pres Trump didn't lower prices on Day 1?

Regarding the thread title, my view is that it is too early for people to see the resulting effects of what Pres Trump has been doing.

Indeed, I doubt if many (most?) even follow the news closely enough to understand the ramifications of what Pres Trump is doing.

Time will tell.

Related...

@#6

What I've been hearing on the local NYC news is that both are considering their options. But nothing is going to happen quickly.

That "without prejudice" aspect, as I understand it, means that Pres Trump is now effectively the Mayor of NYC, dictating to Mayor Adams what he (Pres Trump) wants done under the threat of the charges being re-instated.

Related...

@#53

Trump administration's intentional chaos, or incompetence?

Update ...

@#5 ... Hegseth has walked all of this back. ...

Too late for that.

Sec Hegseth said it, and Pres Putin heard Pres Trump giving up before the negotiations have even begun.

This is what happens when you have an amateur running the DoD.

@#1 ... The department ordered the case dropped, citing the city's approaching November mayoral election and saying that prosecuting Adams could interfere with his ability to assist with a crackdown on immigration, a top Trump priority. ...

That's like dropping the charges against a bank robber because would interfere with his job.

More from the article...

... Danielle Sassoon, tapped to lead the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office on Trump's second day in office, quit on Thursday rather than go along with a Justice Department order to drop a criminal corruption case against Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams.

The department ordered the case dropped, citing the city's approaching November mayoral election and saying that prosecuting Adams could interfere with his ability to assist with a crackdown on immigration, a top Trump priority. Trump has said he did not personally order the charges against Adams dropped.

The resignation illustrated the tensions between the traditional U.S. conservative Republican legal movement and Trump's desire to exert far more direct control of the federal government, challenging standards of prosecutorial independence that have stood for a half century. ...

More from the article...

... President Donald Trump says he is personally monitoring Elon Musk's conflicts of interest while working at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)"but admitted he wasn't sure in which capacity the Tesla boss met India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Musk's meeting with Modi in Washington, D.C., yesterday happened before the politician sat down with President Trump, with the pair discussing issues such as space and technology.

Given Musk's two major companies -- SpaceX and Tesla -- operating in these industries, the meeting would ordinarily raise no eyebrows.

However, with Musk currently working as a special government employee in the Trump administration, questions about the overlap between his personal interests and public service continue to mount.

When President Trump was asked whether his ally and major donor Musk had met with Modi as a private citizen or a government staffer, the president was unsure.

"I don't know," President Trump told reporters in the White House. "They met, and I assume he wants to do business in India." ...

@#14 ... Long line of things lined up for a bad outcome by the sounds of it. ...

But, but, but... Pres Trump said the crash was due to DEI. When asked how he knew that, he said ~Common sense. I have common sense.~

@32 ... anyone who thought that was gonna end with putin giving stuff back is a moron/ ...

If that is the case, why allow, even encourage, Pres Putin to take even more of Ulraine in the future?

More from the article...

... Why it matters: Hegseth's comments, followed Wednesday by President Trump's initiation of direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, drew fierce criticism from NATO allies and even some Republicans.

- - - "I don't know who wrote the speech -- it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool," Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, told Politico.

- - - Wicker, speaking on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, suggested that Hegseth had made a "rookie mistake" and "walked back some of what he said" on Thursday. ...

More from the article...

... "The threat that I worry the most about vis--vis Europe is not Russia. It's not China. It's not any external actor," he said at the Munich Security Conference. "What I worry about is the threat from within " the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America."

He added: "I've heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from and of course, that's important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me ... is what exactly you're defending yourselves for?"

The vice president's comments were met with an icy reception and only scattered applause " and groans when he joked about how if American democracy could "survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk."

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius denounced Vance's remarks during a session at the conference later in the day, saying in German that it was "not acceptable" that the U.S. vice president compared "the condition of Europe with the condition that prevails in some auto-authoritarian regimes."...

@#5 ... Pres Trump looks to be doing it from a starting position of surrender and weakness. ...

... The world's fourth-most-richest man -- a good friend also of the world's richest man Elon Musk -- ...

Could this be why Mr Musk is rummaging through the Federal government data systems, the harvesting of data?

More from the article...

... The world's fourth-most-richest man " a good friend also of the world's richest man Elon Musk " insisted artificial intelligence is soon going to change everyone's lives "across the board."

If governments want in, they'll need to gather all their data " spatial information, economic data, electronic healthcare records including genomic data, and info about infrastructure. Whatever they've got, basically. And put it all in one place to be analyzed by algorithms. The American multi-billionaire used the United States as an example, if not a goal.

"I have to tell [the] AI model as much about my country as I can," Ellison said. "We need to unify all the national data, put it into a database where it's easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like," he said. "That's the missing link."

... The dangerous co-optation of the Justice Department by the Trump White House continues in ways both substantive and symbolic. ...

From an article on the Back Page...

@#3 ... just like when President Biden told the Justice Dept to attack Trump. ...

Did he? What evidence do you have?

More from the OpEd ...

... During its first few weeks, the Trump Administration has unleashed a flurry of measures to radically reshape the federal government. Many of these moves are overtly unlawful. This paper identifies the legal problems with many of the most prominent actions: freezing funding, amending or repealing rules, and denying citizenship to children born in the United States.[2] ...

Amending and Repealing Rules Without Following Statutorily Mandated Procedures

Since 1946, Congress has sought to improve the quality of administrative rules by requiring federal agencies to seek public comments when they promulgate, amend, or repeal rules. For most rule-making affecting the general public, this mandate appears in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).[20] For rules the Office of Personnel Management makes, a separate statute requires compliance with the APA.[21]

The Biden Administration followed the APA to promulgate rules on many of its top priorities, both in regulations protecting the general public and in rules protecting career civil servants from political coercion or discrimination. On some issues, it was unable to finish soliciting and responding to public comments and therefore abandoned making policy in those areas.

The new Administration, however, is repeatedly disregarding its statutory duty to seek public comment before it regulates. For example, the President directed the Office of Personnel Management to disregard a duly promulgated regulation giving federal employees the right to remain in their current classification if the Administration reclassified them into positions where they would lack security of tenure.[22] This is significant because the same executive order shifts large numbers of federal workers out of the non-political competitive service into positions where they may be fired at will. ...