What’s the theme of three weeks of news since my last column? I’ll go with, “If Trump had any principles at all, it would be just one: Pro-Predator, All The Time.”
I was somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike when I saw this on my phone and almost laughed out loud because it’s so perfect.
Trump EPA Nearly Doubles Amount of Formaldehyde Considered Safe
On the other hand, I may have used a bad word that definitely wasn’t “fuckery” when the next pro-predator story hit me: US watchdog says paycheck advances no longer subject to lending law. Because there’s a lot of money to be made from people not quite surviving paycheck to paycheck, if you just know how to bleed it out of them.
Oh, I can’t believe I almost forgot this one. Yesterday afternoon, a friend of mine in a finance-related industry was doing his required annual compliance training on his laptop. At one point in the session, this message pops up:
On February 10, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily pausing the enforcement of the FCPA. However, it’s important to note that bribery remains illegal, and future penalties are still possible despite the pause in enforcement.
It’s not that the administration is legalizing bribery or nullifying the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That’d be too much trouble. It’s just formally not giving a damn about any violations. Pretty funny coming from the savior elected by the crowd who loved to complain about “the swamp” and “free stuff,” but that’s where we are now.
Speaking of enforcement, the U.S. Postal Service will no longer endeavor to postmark your mail to reflect the day that you gave it to the USPS. Instead, the postmark will reflect when the mail hit its first automation process. You might think, “Uh-oh, that could technically make me late filing my taxes even if I mail my return on time.”
Which might lead you to wonder why people with simple taxes are having to file a return at all when the government already has all the info necessary. Or maybe you’d wonder why you can’t file your tax return directly through a government portal instead of dealing with the mail or with a for-profit third-party electronic tax return company. Well, you’d have to Google the reason in both cases, but I can tell you it starts with G-O-P.
Inserting unnecessary cost, time, and complication to prop up a particular industry at the expense of taxpayers of modest means is predatory.
While it’s natural to think of tax returns, the part of the USPS postmark shift that really makes the GOP swoon is the destabilizing effect on mail-in ballots. The new policy makes it even easier to argue that ballots should be disallowed even if they may have been mailed on time.
That’s your reminder that while the American Right was happy to suppress the vote through formal, frictionless means, they’re also fine to resort to less obvious maneuvers to keep turnout down and repress civil rights.
Finally, a predation post can’t overlook Epstein. MTG continues to be an occasional help since her self-preservation instincts kicked in, including this bit from the New York Times.
The only inaccuracy here is that Trump thinks he has friends. All he really has is some family (maybe) and several circles of grifters and predators who understand his nature much better than he does.