TRUMP’S POWER GRAB

The president has created a state of emergency

President Donald Trump holds up an executive order, "Unleashing prosperity through deregulation," that he signed in the Oval Office on January 31. / Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

I’m someone who has spent more than enough time in difficult places around the world—places where there was nothing more welcoming than the sight of a USAID truck speeding to some crisis, or perhaps just with food to give away. I never saw the United States’ aid program as an enemy, but the agency has now been shut down and its employees put out of work, as of this week, by presidential fiat. President Donald Trump has abruptly put Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime critic of the USAID when he was in the Senate, and one of his aides in charge of the agency, but we all know who is calling the shots.

We shall see how that plays out. President Trump is now acting like a fly fisherman, casting about to see what he can catch. Something to keep in mind about the president is that his actions now are not original. Republican Presidents for more than five decades have come to office vowing to slash the bureaucracy, eliminating needed services for the citizenry, and finding ways to make piles of money for their financial backers.