current events

Are the Complaints Behind the “TDS” Label Accurate? : A Plain-Language Guide

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

The author posed a series of questions on domestic policy, international agreements, public safety and public health under the Trump Administration to review criticism the President’s supporters assign to his critics: Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. This article is presented for a general audience. The information presented here was researched and prepared using Ai tool Claude. The sources Claude used were current through mid-2026; court rulings and policies in this area change fast, so this article is not a finished assessment but a starting point for the American public in policies affecting us.

The short version

Many criticisms of the Trump administration rest on documented facts, and some are overstated. This guide sorts them by how well the evidence supports them, as of October 13, 2026.

  • Best supported: Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog (GAO) has found more than a dozen violations of the law on withholding approved funds since January 2025. Court fights over these actions are still unresolved (Part 2).
  • Overstated: Predictions that elections would be cancelled have not come true, and blaming specific disasters or deaths on policy cuts is often not backed by evidence (Part 1).
  • Foreign aid cuts and disease: HIV prevention and testing services dropped where US-funded programs were cut, and a large Ebola outbreak in the DRC has passed 9,000 confirmed cases with no US cases. Record US measles cases (4,080) are mainly a domestic vaccination problem, not an aid-cut result (Part 3).
  • Both sides have a point: Supporters are right that earlier presidents also expanded their power and that border crossings fell. Critics are right about court rulings, budget estimates, and measles data.
  • Still changing: Court cases and policies keep moving, so future articles will cover more focused analysis and findings.

How this document is organized

  1. Part 1: The main complaints, by topic. A quick tour of domestic policy, public safety, international agreements, and public health, with the supporters’ best response to each.
  2. Part 2: Case study on withheld funding. What GAO found about the administration holding back money Congress approved.
  3. Part 3: Case study on foreign aid cuts and disease. Which diseases are rising, whether they reached the US, and whether the cuts plausibly caused them.
  4. Glossary and sources. Plain definitions of the terms used, and the links behind the numbers.

How to read the labels. Well documented means confirmed by court records, government data, or watchdog reports. Disputed means the facts are agreed but their legality or meaning is contested. Unsupported means the claim lacks good evidence. Figures marked as my count or my background knowledge were not independently verified.

Part 1: The main complaints, by topic

“TDS” is a label for criticism that supporters see as reflexive or irrational. It doesn’t tell you whether a particular criticism is accurate, and some are well documented while others are overstated. Below, complaints are sorted by how well they hold up, along with the strongest supporter response to each.

Domestic policy

  • Executive power and spending (well documented, legality contested). Impoundment of appropriated funds, firing of independent-agency officials, and large federal workforce cuts all happened, and the GAO found some impoundment violations. Supporters argue the unitary-executive theory, an electoral mandate, and precedent from past presidents. Courts have split, so “unlawful” is a legal question still being settled, not an established fact.
  • Tariffs (effects documented, authority litigated). Most economists find that importers and consumers bear much of the cost. Legal challenges to the use of emergency powers (IEEPA) went to the Supreme Court. Supporters point to negotiating leverage, revenue, and reshoring goals.
  • Immigration enforcement (both sides have evidence). Critics cite due-process problems, including third-country removals, Alien Enemies Act litigation, and some wrongful detentions of citizens. Supporters correctly note that border crossings fell sharply. Both claims are true.
  • Use of the Justice Department against opponents (documented, interpretation disputed). Prosecutions of Comey and Letitia James drew criticism, and at least one was dismissed over the prosecutor’s improper appointment. Supporters call it reciprocal accountability for earlier cases against Trump.
  • Election claims (the claim that the 2020 election was stolen is unsupported). Courts, audits, and Trump’s own officials found no fraud sufficient to change the outcome. Complaints about this are substantive, though predictions that elections would be cancelled have not materialized.
  • Fiscal effects (CBO-scored). CBO projected the 2025 reconciliation law adds trillions to deficits and reduces insurance coverage through Medicaid changes. Supporters cite growth effects and tax relief.

Public safety

  • National Guard and federal deployments to cities. The deployments are documented, and legality has been contested under Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act, with mixed court rulings. Supporters point to reported crime declines in places like DC.
  • January 6 pardons. The pardons and commutations included people convicted of assaulting officers, which critics say undermines law enforcement. Supporters say the prosecutions were excessive.
  • Enforcement tactics. Masked agents, aggressive operations, and fatal shootings during enforcement actions (including in Minneapolis) drew sharp criticism. Supporters say agents face rising assaults and doxxing.
  • Rhetoric and political violence. Critics cite language like “enemy within.” Supporters cite the two attempts on Trump’s life in 2024 and the killing of Charlie Kirk in 2025. Violence has come from multiple directions, and causation claims are hard to establish.
  • Lethal strikes on alleged drug boats. Many legal scholars call them extrajudicial killings. The administration frames them as counter-narco-terrorism.
  • Disaster preparedness. Cuts to FEMA and NOAA staffing were documented. Claims that they caused specific harms, citing the response during the 2025 Texas floods, are much less established.

International treaties and alliances

  • Withdrawals (documented and legal, so the dispute is over wisdom). These include the WHO, the Paris Agreement, UNESCO, and the UN Human Rights Council. Supporters cite sovereignty and disproportionate US funding.
  • Alliances. Critics cite doubts about NATO’s Article 5, pressure on Greenland, and pressure on Ukraine. Supporters note allies agreed at the 2025 summit to a 5% defense-spending target, which they credit to Trump.
  • Trade commitments. Critics say tariffs strain WTO and USMCA obligations. Supporters say those agreements were unfair or poorly enforced.
  • Arms control. The first-term exits from the Iran deal and the INF Treaty continue to be debated, as do the future of New START and the 2025 strikes on Iran.

Public health

  • Foreign aid cuts. The dismantling of USAID and PEPFAR disruptions is documented. Death-toll figures (some in the millions) are model-based estimates and vary widely. Supporters cite waste and fraud.
  • Vaccine policy under RFK Jr. The changes include replacing the vaccine advisory committee, revising recommendations, and cancelling mRNA contracts. Measles outbreaks reached record levels in decades, and experts widely criticized the 2025 claims linking Tylenol to autism as poorly supported. Supporters point to food dye and nutrition reforms and to distrust of institutions that has some basis.
  • Research and agency turmoil. Grant terminations, the attempted cap on NIH indirect costs (blocked by courts), and CDC leadership upheaval are documented.
  • Insurance coverage. Medicaid changes and the expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies are projected to raise the uninsured count.

Where the “TDS” charge sticks

Criticism tends to be weakest when it:

  • predicts imminent dictatorship or cancelled elections that haven’t happened
  • attributes specific disasters or deaths to policy without evidence
  • makes personal or medical diagnoses of Trump
  • treats every action as equally alarming, which hides the better-documented concerns

Supporters are on firmest ground in noting that some critics responded to policies they would have tolerated from other presidents, and that previous administrations also expanded executive power. They are on weaker ground when the label is used to dismiss documented facts, like court rulings, CBO estimates, or the measles data.

Part 2: Case study on withheld government funding (impoundment)

In plain terms: Congress passes laws saying how much money agencies must spend and on what. Impoundment means the executive branch refuses to spend that money, or lets it expire unspent. A 1974 law lets a president ask Congress to cancel funds, but the money must be released if Congress does not agree. GAO, a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, checks whether that happened. The details below are current as of October 13, 2026.

How the process works. Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA), a president who wants to cancel funds Congress appropriated must send a special message proposing a rescission. Funds can be held back temporarily while Congress considers it, but if Congress does not act, they must be released. GAO reviews impoundments and reports violations to Congress. GAO states that its role is procedural and that it takes no position on whether the underlying programs are good policy.

Timing caveat. Most of GAO’s 2026 violation findings concern conduct from fiscal year (FY) 2025. Only the September 29 letter concerns FY2026 funds. Federal News Network reported that the September decision was GAO’s first ICA decision in about a year.

Tally

  • As of the September 29 decision, reporting put the number of GAO-identified ICA violations at 12 since January 2025.
  • Two further violation findings followed on October 7 (AHRQ and EPA, below). By my count that makes 14, but that is my inference, so check GAO’s Impoundment Control Act page for the official list.
  • In 2025, GAO testified that it had opened 39 impoundment investigations.

In October 2026, GAO issued two major Impoundment Control Act (ICA) decisions: one on presidential rescission proposals and another finding HHS illegally withheld $78 million in health research funds.

1. Presidential Special Message Review – September 25, 2026

On September 29, 2026, GAO released B‑338788, reviewing the President’s special message proposing rescissions from 11 appropriation accounts U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO).

  • Key finding: Under the ICA, the President may propose rescissions to Congress, but cannot withhold appropriated funds beyond their fiscal year expiration unless Congress enacts a rescission bill.
  • GAO concluded the President may not force the expiration of budget authority already enacted and not rescinded, regardless of size, because doing so subverts Congress’s constitutional “power of the purse” U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO).
  • The decision is procedural, not a policy judgment, and reaffirms GAO’s role in protecting congressional prerogatives.

Full report: GAO B‑338788 – Impoundment Control Act of 1974: Review of the President’s Special Message of September 25, 2026 U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO).

2. HHS AHRQ Withholding – October 7, 2026

On October 7, 2026, GAO issued B‑337872 finding that HHS violated the ICA by withholding over $78 million in FY 2025 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) grant funds U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)+2.

  • Context: AHRQ staff responsible for grant administration were laid off under an executive order, leading to reduced grant awarding.
  • Violation: HHS withheld funds without submitting the required special message to Congress, making it an unlawful impoundment rather than a permissible programmatic delay     political.orgpolitical.org+1.
  • GAO stressed that agencies must prudently obligate or expend appropriated funds for another permissible purpose; they cannot simply withhold them because of lump‑sum appropriations U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)+1.
  • The decision notes ongoing litigation and states that the Comptroller General may bring a civil action to compel obligation if funds remain improperly withheld U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO).

Full report: GAO B‑337872 – AHRQ Application of ICA to Grant Funds Availability U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO).

Summary

These decisions reinforce the ICA’s core principle: Congress must approve any rescission or withholding of appropriated funds; the Executive Branch cannot unilaterally block them.

GAO actions in 2026

1. Pocket rescission special message (B-338788, September 29, 2026).

  • On September 25, 2026, the President sent Congress a special message proposing rescissions from 11 appropriation accounts, and OMB simultaneously issued a reapportionment letter withholding those amounts from obligation. The OMB letter was addressed to the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and international assistance programs.
  • All 11 accounts expire at the end of FY2026 (September 30). The congressional consideration period ends no earlier than November 9, 2026, after the funds expire. That is why the tactic is called a pocket rescission: the funds lapse before Congress can act.
  • GAO concluded that the ICA does not allow the withholding of funds past their expiration date, so the special message does not authorize withholding beyond FY2026. GAO relied on the ICA’s text, its legislative history, Supreme Court precedent, and the constitutional framework, and cited earlier decisions including B-330330 (2018) and B-337805 (September 2025).
  • GAO added that any withholding past expiration, regardless of size, undermines Congress’s power of the purse. It declined to examine other legal issues the message might raise.
  • The amount is reported inconsistently: about $810 million in The Hill’s coverage, and nearly $1 billion in Federal News Network and AcademyHealth reporting. Housing Counseling Assistance is among the affected funds, according to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and AHRQ funds were also included.
  • OMB Director Russell Vought responded that the finding was not a surprise.

2. HHS, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (B-337872, October 7, 2026): violation.

  • HHS did not obligate or spend more than $78 million of AHRQ’s FY2025 appropriation before the fiscal year closed and sent no special message.
  • GAO found this was an impoundment rather than a mere programmatic delay. It reasoned that by removing a large share of grant-administration staff shortly before year-end, HHS eliminated AHRQ’s capacity to carry out its authorized functions.
  • AcademyHealth estimates AHRQ lost about 80 percent of its staff. Grant Witness data cited by Inside Higher Ed show AHRQ grant spending of $41.3 million in FY2026, versus $216 million in FY2025 and $419 million in FY2024.
  • Litigation over the delay of AHRQ grant funds is ongoing.

3. EPA, Community Change Grants (B-337485, October 7, 2026): violation.

  • Under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants program, EPA paused payments and then terminated the Community Change Grants. Press coverage put the terminated grants at more than $1 billion.
  • GAO found two violations: withholding funds after deciding to end the program, and withholding them from obligation by terminating the grants, in both cases without a special message to Congress.
  • GAO noted that Congress later rescinded the unobligated program balances in Public Law 119-21. It still found the earlier termination was an impoundment.
  • GAO also relied on a court’s reasoning that the statute did not let EPA withhold funds simply because it disagreed with the program’s purposes. Related litigation continues, including a Fourth Circuit stay of an injunction and a remand asking the district court to consider whether the rescission mooted the claims.

4. Department of Education, Child Care Access Means Parents in School (B-337813, October 7, 2026): no violation. This finding is a reminder that GAO does not rule against the administration in every case.

Earlier decisions (2025), for context

MatterDecisionResult
DOT, National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) programSpring 2025Violation
HHS, Head Start2025Violation
HHS, NIH grants (B-337203)Summer 2025Violation
DOE, Renew America’s Schools (B-337208)July 31, 2025Both violation and no violation
USDA, Environmental Quality Incentives Program (B-337209)August 5, 2025No violation
DHS, FEMA FY2025 assistance (B-337204.1)September 15, 2025Both violation and no violation

Assessment: how well do the complaints hold up?

  • Strongly supported: GAO, a nonpartisan legislative-branch agency, has formally found repeated ICA violations, including the specific dollar amounts and mechanisms above. The core factual complaint, that appropriated funds were withheld or allowed to expire without the statutory process, is well documented.
  • Limits of what GAO’s findings show: They are statutory conclusions, not court judgments. GAO’s opinions are not binding on the executive branch. The Comptroller General may sue to compel release of funds, but reporting indicates GAO has never filed such a suit and has taken no enforcement action on its conclusions. Several related cases remain in the courts, and whether the ICA itself constrains a president is a question the administration has contested. That background comes from earlier reporting, not the sources retrieved for this section.
  • Where critics overreach: Describing the whole pattern as unprecedented lawlessness skips over GAO’s own mixed results (Education, USDA, and the mixed FEMA and DOE findings), and over the fact that earlier presidents of both parties also had disputes with GAO over impoundment.
  • Supporters’ strongest responses: Contesting GAO’s interpretation and authority; pointing out that Congress itself rescinded the EPA balances; and arguing the programs were wasteful or mismanaged. GAO deliberately does not weigh those policy arguments.
  • Source caution: Statements from DeLauro, Murray, and Boyle are Democratic officials’ press releases. The primary sources are GAO’s own decisions.

Sources for Part 2

Part 3: Case study on foreign aid cuts and disease

In plain terms: In 2025 the US dismantled USAID, its main overseas aid agency, and cut many health programs. Researchers warned this would increase disease. This part checks, disease by disease, which outbreaks are actually rising in 2026, whether they have reached the US, and whether the cuts plausibly caused them. The details below are current as of October 13, 2026.

Scope. This section covers diseases (1) detected inside US states or territories in 2026, or (2) rising in 2026 compared with 2020, and asks how strong the evidence is that US foreign aid cuts contributed. Evidence on the cuts’ effects is much stronger for service disruptions overseas than for disease detected in the US, and several US trends have mainly domestic causes.

What the cuts were, and what modelers estimate

  • USAID was dismantled in 2025. KFF found that 71% of HIV-related awards it identified were terminated, and about 80% of USAID malaria awards were terminated. Congress nonetheless kept appropriating money: $4.8 billion for PEPFAR and about $805 million for PMI and other bilateral malaria work in FY2026, and the US pledged $4.6 billion to the Global Fund through 2029. US funding for HIV in low- and middle-income countries still fell from $6.7 billion to $4.6 billion between 2024 and 2025, according to a report cited in Nature.
  • Death estimates are model-based and vary widely. A Lancet study (ISGlobal) projects at least 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030 if aid cuts continue at recent rates. A separate Lancet analysis co-authored at UCLA projects more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030 from USAID cuts, including 4.5 million children under 5. The Center for Global Development estimated that USAID cuts alone may have cost 500,000 to 1,000,000 lives in 2025, while Ireland’s government has cited 500,000 to 700,000. These are projections or estimates, not counted deaths.
  • Observed effects are clearer for services than for deaths. A Lancet Global Health study at four NGOs in Uganda and Zimbabwe found HIV prevention services down by about a third to nearly two-thirds from 2024 levels, PrEP use down as much as 72%, and testing down as much as 64%. A 14-country analysis cited by KFF found significant drops in access to HIV services from early 2025 to early 2026, with limited recovery.

Diseases detected in the US or its territories in 2026

Measles (confirmed US increase; aid link weak).

  • As of October 8, 2026, CDC reported 4,080 confirmed cases, the highest annual total since 1991 and above 2025’s 2,289. There have been 42 outbreaks, and about 95% of cases were in people who were unvaccinated or of unknown status.
  • Measles elimination status (held since 2000) is at risk, and reporting says the US technically met the criteria for losing it earlier this year because of continuous transmission.
  • Compared with 2020, the rise is dramatic:  In 2020, the United States reported 13 confirmed measles cases, according to CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System.

Source and data

  • The figure comes from the CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases: Infectious Annual Tables (Table 2k), which compiles confirmed measles cases reported to CDC through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) CDCCDC. This is the official national dataset for notifiable infectious diseases in the U.S.

Context

  • Elimination status: The U.S. had declared measles elimination in 2000, meaning no sustained community transmission has been detected for at least 12 consecutive months. However, occasional importations occur, and outbreaks can happen in under‑vaccinated communities CDC.
  • 2020 situation: The 13 cases in 2020 were consistent with the low baseline level of measles activity in the U.S. after the 2019 outbreaks, which had temporarily threatened elimination status.
  • How to access the full dataset
  • You can view the complete 2020 measles case table, including breakdowns by region and reporting area, in the CDC’s public domain PDF: CDC 2020 Annual Report – Table 2k (Measles)
  • In summary: The USA recorded 13 confirmed measles cases in 2020, reflecting the country’s-maintained measles elimination status but also the ongoing need for high vaccination coverage to prevent outbreaks.
  • The surge is driven by domestic undervaccination in specific communities (Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Pennsylvania). Foreign aid cuts could matter indirectly through global measles surveillance and vaccination support, but at present there is no quantifiable data.

Clade I mpox (increasing in the US; aid link indirect and weak).

  • The first US Clade I case was reported in November 2024. CDC counted 15 cases through March 2026, and the PAHO regional report listed 50 by August 27, 2026. CDC states that clade I cases were increasing as of July 2026, and the US reported its first Clade I case with no travel history.
  • There was no Clade I in the US in 2020, so any detection is an increase.
  • Link to aid cuts: CDC says the DRC is no longer the epicenter of Clade Ib spread. Of 33 exported Clade Ib cases worldwide in January to March 2026, 24 originated in Europe and only 8 in Central or Eastern Africa. That weakens a direct aid-cut explanation for US cases.

Dengue in US territories (ongoing; no aid link established).

  • Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands declared dengue outbreaks in 2024. American Samoa declared an emergency in July 2025, identified 409 cases from June to November 2025 (76% in children), and as of mid-April 2026 its outbreak declaration was still active.
  • I did not retrieve complete 2026 case counts, so a 2026 versus 2020 comparison is not verified.

As of 2025, the United States reported approximately 2,096 confirmed dengue cases, including both travel-related and locally acquired infections.

In 2025, dengue activity in the U.S. has been notably elevated, with 2,096 confirmed cases reported nationwide through the CDC’s ArboNET system, reflecting both travel-associated and local transmission States with significant local transmission include Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, and Hawaii, where climate and mosquito populations create favorable conditions for the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes

Historically, most dengue cases in the continental U.S. occur in travelers returning from endemic regions. However, recent years, including 2025, show increasing local transmission, particularly in southern and coastal states. For example, Florida reported 91 locally acquired cases, California 18, and Texas 1 by early 2025. Travelers returning from high-risk countries can introduce the virus to local mosquito populations, potentially triggering new outbreaks

Comparison to Previous Years

The 2025 case count represents a continuation of elevated dengue activity compared to prior years, with a notable increase in local transmission in traditionally low-risk areas

Diseases rising abroad in 2026 (not detected in the US)

Bundibugyo Ebola, DRC and neighbors (largest aid-cut debate).

  • First reported May 14 to 15, 2026 in Ituri Province, DRC. WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on May 16. CDC reported 8,750 confirmed cases and 4,208 deaths as of October 6, and Al Jazeera reported more than 9,000 confirmed cases on October 13. It is the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, caused by a species with no approved vaccine or treatment.
  • In 2020, the DRC’s Equateur outbreak was about 130 cases (per Claude), so the 2026 outbreak is vastly larger.
  • No case has been detected in the US as of October 6. Two Americans infected in the DRC were treated in Germany and recovered. CDC calls the risk to the US very low, and on October 11 it extended a 30-day entry suspension for travelers from the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan after Kenya reported its first imported case and death.
  • Aid-cut link: Experts including Craig Spencer argue the outbreak spread undetected from about January to May in a setting of reduced global health support, and a September 2026 paper in Frontiers in Public Health argues the USAID closure weakened outbreak detection (it cites USAID’s STRIDES program, an estimated $245 million investment in partner detection capacity). This is a plausible mechanism but not proven. Initial tests also detected only the Zaire species, which is a diagnostic gap, and Ebola outbreaks arise from many factors.

HIV (service declines documented; infection surge projected).

  • Testing, PrEP, and treatment access fell where US-funded programs were cut. Models (Burnet Institute) project 4.4 to 10.8 million additional infections and 770,000 to 2.9 million additional deaths from 2025 to 2030 under the most severe funding scenario.
  • Caveat: when testing falls, fewer cases are diagnosed, so reported cases can drop even if true infections rise. Rises in measured incidence are not yet documented in the sources I retrieved.

Malaria (rising for years; cuts add risk).

  • Global malaria cases have risen for six consecutive years, so the trend predates the 2025 cuts. Sources describe cuts, drug resistance, insecticide resistance, extreme weather, and population growth as combined drivers.
  • A CIDRAP report cites a researcher who said the malaria death rate at some DRC clinics in January was three times higher than a year earlier, attributed to anti-malarial drug shortages. That is a single-source account, not national data.

Cholera (a counterexample).

  • WHO reported 163,031 cholera and acute watery diarrhea cases and 1,686 deaths from January 1 to June 28, 2026, a 49.5% drop in cases and 57% drop in deaths versus the same period in 2025. This does not fit a simple story that aid cuts increased every outbreak disease.  

Assessment: how strong is the evidence?

DiseaseIn US or territories in 2026?Rising vs 2020?Evidence linking to US aid cuts
MeaslesYes, 4,080 casesYes, sharplyWeak; mainly domestic undervaccination
Clade I mpoxYes, about 50 casesYes (none in 2020)Weak; DRC no longer the main source
Dengue (territories)Yes, ongoing outbreaksNot verified for 2026None found
Bundibugyo EbolaNoYes, far largerPlausible (detection delay), unproven
HIVNot applicableProjected; services downStrong for service disruption, weaker for case counts
MalariaNot applicableYes, rising for yearsMixed; cuts one of several drivers
CholeraNot applicableDown vs 2025Not supported
  • Where critics are on strong ground: Documented terminations of HIV and malaria awards, measured drops in HIV services, and a plausible mechanism (weaker surveillance) for the late detection of the Ebola outbreak.
  • Where the TDS charge has more force: Attributing US measles or US mpox cases to foreign aid cuts is poorly supported, and headline death totals are modeled projections. Cholera’s 2026 decline also undercuts blanket claims.
  • Supporters’ strongest responses: Congress kept funding PEPFAR, PMI, and the Global Fund at or near prior levels; the administration’s America First Global Health Strategy aims to shift costs to partner countries; and models rest on assumptions that may overstate harm. Critics reply that terminated awards and staff losses disrupted programs regardless of topline appropriations.

Sources for Part 3

Glossary

  • Impoundment: The executive branch refuses to spend money that Congress approved.
  • Rescission: A formal request asking Congress to cancel money it already approved.
  • Pocket rescission: A rescission request sent so close to the end of the fiscal year that the funds expire before Congress can vote.
  • Special message: The formal notice to Congress that a president must send to propose a rescission.
  • Impoundment Control Act (ICA): The 1974 law that sets the rules for withholding or cancelling approved funds.
  • GAO (Government Accountability Office): A nonpartisan agency that audits government spending for Congress.
  • OMB (Office of Management and Budget): The White House office that manages the federal budget.
  • CBO (Congressional Budget Office): A nonpartisan agency that estimates what laws will cost.
  • IEEPA: A law giving the president emergency economic powers, used to justify some tariffs.
  • Posse Comitatus Act and Insurrection Act: Laws limiting, and in some cases allowing, the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
  • USAID: The US Agency for International Development, which ran most US foreign aid until it was dismantled in 2025.
  • PEPFAR: The US program that funds HIV testing and treatment overseas.
  • PMI (President’s Malaria Initiative): The US program that funds malaria prevention and treatment overseas.
  • PrEP: A medicine that prevents HIV infection.
  • Clade I mpox: A family of the mpox virus that is generally more severe than the one behind the 2022 outbreak.
  • Measles elimination status: A country has this status when measles has not spread continuously within its borders for a year or more. The US has held it since 2000.

Public health emergency of international concern: The World Health Organization’s highest alert level for an outbre

Lessons from Manzanar, part 2

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Human Rights and the public good

At the visitor center at Manzanar National Monument, my wife and I spoke with a docent about a book of images available at their store There were images that Ansel Adams, the famous photographer of landscapes, had taken of internees over the years. Apparently, another famous portraitist, Dorothea Lange, also had taken a series of images that captured the human pain more succinctly (only such images that reflected positively were published; the others, subsequently, were not released publicly by the Government). Forty years later, after incremental policy reversals and President Ronald Reagan publicly apologizing to survivors and descendants, these sites were turned into monuments to make future Americans remember.  However, racism finds other targets.

 “After the attacks of 9/11, when people angrily singled out people wearing Muslim headscarf”, she said, “it was the Nisei – the children of those who had been in the relocation camps, who defended Americans of Mid-eastern decent.” They did not want the painful lessons of the past to be repeated.  She identified a child’s photograph on display there in the center, from the Manzanar camp, as one who defended a Muslim woman after September 11th. Like the refugees of the last few years who fled civil wars in Libya, from ISIS in Syria, crossing the Mediterranean and interdicted in Greece and Italy, Ukrainian women and children fled the Russian invasion there. With these emigrants joining those who have been resettled in several countries including the United States, the competition for services only gets more competitive. However, these recent immigrants are learning valuable skills to support themselves, notably in healthcare, which after the global COVID pandemic have seen a large need but few new workers among the native born. In the fifty years since Vietnam, Americans of Vietnamese ancestry hold public office. Americans of Philippine ancestry serve in the military and in public services. Americans of Middle Eastern ancestry hold public office. Americans have elected and reelected a black President, Vice President, congressmen and mayors. However, the public is still being persuaded through government institutions and media conglomerates that racism is the single most prevalent problem in America.

Ask the Chief: guilt or innocence depends on whom the axe falls?

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Arsonist. A disgruntled sailor. Traitor. These are the thoughts that went through my mind, as a Navy veteran, when I first heard of the sailor who allegedly set the USS Bon Homme Richard on fire. But the facts do not seem to bear this out in a military courtroom. A military judge presiding over that sailor’s courts-martial found him not guilty today. The Navy failed to prove that this seaman who had dropped out of SEAL training, and was assigned to the Deck Division on the BHR, was responsible for the fire.

Scuttlebutt seemed to suggest that he was guilty before trial, but scuttlebutt has been wrong about a lot of thing. Sadly, does it seem that the Navy, like many in the public, academia, government, and media, began with a plausible conclusion and proceeded to find evidence to support the conclusion. Could someone have stored flammable batteries or fuels inconsistent with current safety precautions? Did firefighting teams note which areas were not effectively protected with shipboard or pierside foam or pressurized ff mains? Did investigators focus on one suspect to the exclusion of more factors? It certainly is a lot tidier to find a young man guilty of the willful destruction of a warship, than to determine that crew training, shipyard planners, supervisory personnel, and the senior authority of the Naval District were derelict, or at best, naïve as to the level of preparedness military and civilian personnel had to respond to emergencies. What steps is the Navy taking to prevent such casualties in the future?

seewater** lawyer

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

“water water everywhere but not a drop to drink”

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Samuel Coleridge, poet, ca 1798

Among humans, particularly those living on the North American continent, the prudent planning and mobilizing a coordinated effort to prepare for difficult times, is most often too little, too late. However, individuals who are a bit more cynical about large bureaucracies’ promises and are more self-reliant as a result (terms which often describes military veterans), often see future hardships and prepare accordingly. We have stories passed down to us: all of Noah’s countrymen mocking his family’s construction of a boat in the desert; the mockers all drowned. An ancient Egyptian Pharaoh’s governor, Jacob, filled storehouses way ahead of a famine that lasted for years; he supplied the nations around them (and incidentally enjoyed a “family reunion” as a result). In the present day, “preppers” are mocked for assembling food, having power generators, accumulating stores and being prepared for defense in the event of pandemics, supply disruptions, and famine. Truthfully, with evidence of civilizations collapsing from these things, human beings are rarely capable of acting together in crisis.

One crisis that gets a lot of discussion, but sees little to no actual action, is the lack of water. On on hand, the reality that the poles are melting – storehouses of trillions upon trillions of gallons of water – has generated a lot of governments to generate taxes, declare fines upon “offending industries”, and incur restrictions and rationing; few places are constructing defenses against rising oceans or storage capacity for rainwater. According to most experts, even an unimaginable immediate end to all global human activity “linked” to the warming of the planet will not reduce the effect for hundreds of years. If the oceans rise for the next 300 years, beachfront may be a few miles to ten of miles farther inland. Agriculture in the western States supplying much of the globe will not be supportable without other sources of water. Ideas are periodically “floated” to capture annual rainfall; these include storing “Monsoonal” summer rains in Arizona and other western deserts or piping westward floodwaters of north-central river systems which overrun their banks in Spring. Piping water over the Rocky Mountains from Minnesota to the West, however, is probably never going to be affordable. Thousands or even hundreds of desalinization plants ringing the continental coastlines might help relieve desertification, but the regulations, cost, and delivery is draconian. In California, one county, San Diego, took a dozen years or so, to approve, construct and operate ONE ocean desalinization plant. It supplies a little of San Diego’s needs.

** A play on “sea lawyer”, a pejorative used to describe someone who believes himself to be an authority, but is generally inexperienced with Navy practices and regulations. As a retired Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer, I am well aware that I am neither an expert on climate, a hydrologist nor bureaucrat specializing in water policies, but have some experience as a consumer as well as having observed naval desalinization practices to create potable water.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Chaos as American family brings unexploded shell to Israel airport

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https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/israel-airport-unexploded-shell-american-tourists/index.html

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.

John Steinbeck, novelist, East of Eden

There’s not much a veteran can say about the limits of human irrationality. This story makes me glad these Americans are not my neighbors.

‘White Phosphorus’ Claimed To Be Used In Ukraine May Really Be Russian Napalm Weapon

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/03/25/white-phosphorus-may-really-be-soviet-napalm-weapon/

Use of white phosphorus is horrendously evil even for an enemy combatant. Use of napalm is only slightly less evil. When a regime has little regard for the suffering it causes, the ends justify the means. Only if the regime is not held to account, that is. When a modern military like Russia’s is deployed against Ukraine, a neighboring country under a pretext that nobody believed, and their expected quick occupation turns into an implacable David against a Goliath, weapons are turned against civilians even more readily.

prayer remains the only secure comms

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What hath God wrought?

Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, cit Library of Congress

Before someone discovered the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of stone which had inscriptions written in classical Greek and Egyptian, allowing modern transcription of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the pyramids and other ruins were secure witnesses to Pharoah’s secrets. Until modern times, protecting military communications took several forms from handwritten letters in cyphers that used increasingly more inventive means to encode them. When machines were developed to encode communications and transmit them over wires and then in the Twentieth Century wirelessly, communications had to grow more secure. Old diplomats who assumed “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” (Henry L. Stimson, d 1950), were being unrealistic. As quickly as the medium changed, the means to obfuscate the messaging grew. The leap from the invention of the telegraph (1837 – 44) to global communication satellites and the Internet (~1980) is barely 140 years. And in that time, messages were intercepted and read that thwarted the Kaiser’s plans for Mexico, Hitler’s and Imperial Japan’s war effort, and other campaigns up to the present day.

With the invention of the cell phone, the move to secure civilian communications was spurred by reports that governments were listening in to narcotics traffickers and could determine the phone’s location using ELINT (electronics intelligence) methods. In the last thirty years, companies have made data stored on or transmitted via smartphones more secure, but encryption of voice communications over cellphone is still costly and not generally available. With smartphones becoming the ubiquitous means of communication, whether texting, looking up recipes online, or signing and sending electronically signed contracts to vendors, the expanded need for radio frequencies changed other inventions. Landline telephones, television, and commercial AM and FM radio which had been both a means to inform the public and filter messages through Government censors, are on their way to museums.

In autocratically-controlled countries, filtering the flow of information is a primary concern to those in power. As we have already learned from global corporations that “socialized” the Web, Google, Facebook, and other players throttle dissent and focus (target) messages to audiences that are in line with their beliefs – but mostly to benefit their corporate advertisers. Yet this means of control can also be circumvented in some areas, like we have seen in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where other entities (SpaceX, for one) shipped satellite receivers to the Ukrainians to connect to the world via its new satellite network. But as we saw with a recent network disruption of Viasat’s satellite network, regimes and other adversarial actors are daily working to corrupt communication or spy on those whose data they wish to steal. However, as nations’ cyber warfare apparatus are becoming very proficient both in attacking and defending, old technology is coming back into vogue. With the focus on the Internet and satellite transmissions foremost in Russian and Chinese state filters, Ham (amateur) radio operators are able to communicate with people hunkered down in bomb shelters and isolated areas in the Ukraine. Frustrated Russian military units, hampered by Command-and-Control problems, fuel supply problems and soldiers complaints over unencrypted radio, are being intercepted by civilian operators half a world away.

Yet one medium is still unassailable by technology. Though a favorite target in science fiction, a person’s thoughts remain secure and unable to be monitored by an adversary. At least until they broadcast them on social media or send in military units. However, it may be that Someone is listening in to those “secure” communications. The same Someone who empowered David to slay Goliath, and for now, seems to have been staving off Vladimir Putin’s territorial aspirations.

the restless Earth

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Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

An undersea volcano near Tonga in the south Pacific Ocean created tsunamis that flooded the nearest islands and were measurable five thousand miles away in North America. An undersea earthquake off northern Japan was so violent it disturbed the Earth’s axis, and the tsunamis caused the Fukushima reactor to break down and release radiation. Tsunamis created by an undersea earthquake in Indonesia caused a quarter-million deaths along the coastline of Indian Ocean and Java Sea. On an island near New Zealand, tourists were killed in an eruption when the tour operators were ignorant of or ignored warnings of the impending threat. All over the world, millions of people live along the tectonic boundaries where continents bump against each other, ocean floors spread apart, or dive one under the other. Though weather and movement in the earth are rigorously monitored by technology and experts all over the globe, a pyroclastic cloud obliterating a Latin American community, or a tsunami that washes away homes and livelihoods in Indonesia may strike the vulnerable before the warnings can be acted upon.

As much as the global community is compelled to act to counter Climate Change, tangible support and actionable assistance or infrastructure, in regions where earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic activity damage and kill or injure tens of thousands is warranted now more than political activism and questionable initiatives. Would collective action to install better warning systems, engineer stronger buildings, or investigate “flood-control” measures be useful to counter natural disasters that are happening now?

garbage in and cannot get garbage out

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Garbage is humanity’s biggest problem. Specifically, “what to do” with garbage we humans generate. It is a way more immediate a problem than the ice caps melting as my neighborhood is not expected to be waterfront property even in my grandson’s lifetime. When populations numbered from dozens in an area to a few million across a continent, garbage was not contemplated for the problems it generates today. But nine billion people on Earth generate a lot of waste. Communities in major cities around the world live in garbage dumps. Burning trash, tires and chemical spills make large swaths of the planet barely livable. Plastics and other toxics are collecting in thousand square mile ‘rafts’ in all of earth’s oceans. While I may empathize with global authorities who want to reduce human influence on changing global climate, and where to dump what and recycle other materials, the immediacy of the problem about garbage, for me, is collection.

I live in southern California, and this past December, the company whose trash service I contracted for the last dozen years became embroiled in a labor dispute with its employees. Without weekly collection, residences, businesses and even cities have been overwhelmed with trash. The company quietly noted that subscribers could dump in the company-run landfills without additional cost- but that requires the means to bring it to the landfill which I did not have. A week ago, I paid for a private company to take it all away. Republic Services only yesterday ran a garbage truck down my street. It was almost insulting. They had brought other employees in from other regions to mitigate a potential dispute with the largest municipal contract. Those of us in the unincorporated county had staged our bins each week in hope of being served. After four weeks without further notice from the company, neither of my neighbors had left their bins for collection on the curb! That probably was the emptiest garbage truck moving through our community that morning.

Not mentioned in this whole affair is the new legislation enacted by ‘our’ representatives in Sacramento. California has mandated that food waste as well as other decomposable matter now has to be screened into “green” bins, separating ‘greenhouse-gas’-generating waste, recyclable waste, and landfill -acceptable waste by all residents and businesses. At least, that latest maneuver was anticipated by me late last year. I began a compost program to create fertilizer for my home-grown fruit and vegetables. As for what to do with animal bones – the beef, chicken, pork and fish we eat? I am now supposed to put them in the Green collection. I could crush and burn them at home, as one website advises about minimizing landfill gases, but then the fuel to burn them and the smoke that will generate might get me cited. I am already frivolously barbecuing and smoking away on the pellet smoker Santa brought me for Christmas.

Hopefully, the new service (the one with green, methane-run trucks) I engaged at the end of the year will deliver the means for me to separate my trash today (as promised). At the very least, even if our food waste requires some extra effort to dispose, one effect of the legislation enacted on January 1 will be to minimize burying food that goes unsold in groceries and restaurants in California. Saving the additional space in landfills while feeding people struggling, is noble. What California does to enforce the new environmental rules among the tens of thousands living on the street, whom they were supposed to house by prior legislative initiatives, as they do not subscribe to a waste removal service.

Let us table that discussion. I have trash to dump. Regulations to read. And the environment to save.

freedom of choice

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I make bad decisions often enough. I often regret those decisions, such as eating too much of something tasty, or smoking too many cigars. Sometimes my decisions affect others. When I am driving somewhere with my wife but unfamiliar of the route, I am often adamant I know where I am going. (Worse, I tend to blame my spouse in not giving me good directions.) Yet I try not to make bad decisions on the basis of some jingoist (that is, extreme patriotic or excessive bias in judging one’s own associations, party, or group as superior to others) vision of America.

Constitutionally-protected “rights” and public health responsibilities

Anyone who has a basic understanding of the history and governance of the United States should recognize we are a representative democracy. Framed by our Constitution, the three-branch organization of an executive, legislative and judicial body, depends on knowledgeable citizens who elect representatives to make policy and govern in our collective best interest. Most glaring, given our recent history, the people we elect to public office, and they staff, in all three branches of government are flawed men and women. But so are the people they are supposed to represent. And policies that are implemented are just as flawed.

Public health is everyone’s responsibility

Looking only at decisions that affect the public health of a nation, the last eighteen months of a COVID-19 global pandemic have created confusion, fear, anger, and suspicion that increases the dis-United States. While bureaucrats, politicians and “experts” often find their actions in times of crisis have supporters or opponents, inaction is generally worse for their constituencies. However, in 2020 and continuing in 2021, a large minority of people within the United States demonstrate their freedom by treating public health mandates as akin to tyranny.

Studies prove that people tend to believe others whom they view as authorities (whether or not they actually are such experts). It naturally predisposes us to support those we believe and distrust those we view as opponents. Deciding to refuse basic protection, in the form of masks, or to decline vaccination against COVID-19 based on hearsay, political rhetoric, or Internet-stoked conspiracies, is a bad decision. The majority of those who are refusing masks, or vaccinations, or social-distancing, DO NOT deliberately want to harm their relatives, friends, co-workers or First Responders. But many have been harmed anyway.

The consequences of such behavior have resulted in millions with permanently-altered health and the loss of people who otherwise would be alive today. If Jonas Salk and others had faced such backlash today, millions would still be debilitated by polio, measles, tetanus, Hepatitis A and B, or whooping cough (CDC). That we have forgotten what these illness did is due to the availability of vaccines.

For just a few dollars a dose, vaccines save lives and help reduce poverty. Unlike medical treatment, they provide a lifetime of protection from deadly and debilitating disease. They are safe and effective. They cut healthcare and treatment costs, reduce the number of hospital visits, and ensure healthier children, families and communities.

Seth Berkley, epidemiologist

Consensus in a free society

An online dictionary defines freedom as. (1) the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. (2)   (f. from): the state of not being subject to or affected by (a particular undesirable thing). One of the tenets of living in a free society is that consensus achieves the best outcome for citizens. The first step toward consensus is hold reasoned debate on such things as public health policy, voter-directed oversight of our legislators, tighter control of bureaucrats, and what policies should be left up to local or state oversight.  Just as some see conspiracies between certain plutocrats, elected officials, and foreign entities, when any group deems public health concerns and their remedy (i.e. COVID vaccination) are politically-motivated, these dissenting voices are as selfish and unpatriotic – as those whose views they claim to oppose. The solution to each of a nation’s divisive issues is reasoned dialogue and consensus. Or Abraham Lincoln’s words will ring true. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  .

perseverance

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The “Perseverance” Rover landing successfully on the surface of Mars this week is a metaphor for the amazing success of a team – thousands of people – who rose to the challenge of putting that vehicle on a planet 300 million miles away. Human beings focused on delivering their best effort can make ambitious goals possible. This has been the case since before recorded history up through sending probes beyond our solar system. Over thousands of years people have advanced their understanding of the universe from erecting temples aligned with the relative movement of stars and planets, navigating across oceans, to physicists, engineers technical specialists, and support teams landing on other worlds. Closer to home, it is tragic that a microscopic organism, one (or more- mutations) of billions on our planet, in the 21st Century has killed or harmed millions of people across the world in the last eighteen months. Prompted by the urgency of finding a vaccine, a lot of dedicated people have been working to determine the nature of the COVID virus, obtain cooperation of billions to slow infection, and then test and distribute a vaccine to eight billion people in the last couple months time.

In both of these examples, the challenge of getting humans to work together, to seek to understand, or to solve a complex problem is tested. We can send probes to study Pluto and Oort Cloud objects, but preventing species extinction, or mitigating natural and man-made disasters seem impossibly difficult. Problems mobilize communities for a period of time, but it requires ongoing teamwork and collective vision to make meaningful change. However, if every person took the opportunity tomorrow and every day after that, to make a small yet positive change in thought and action, we can achieve goals. The book Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, by James Clear, introduces an insight into how in every endeavor, small yet continual process improvements can achieve incredible results. Perseverance is a necessary attribute whether it is landing on Mars or solving an endemic human problem.