While Donald Trump has had some big wins this week, he has also had to deal with members of the Republican Party pushing back against certain of his policies.
Multiple GOP senators have expressed concerns about Trump targeting blue cities amid his ongoing his crime crackdown.
Additionally, reports just broke that Trump is allowing some forms of student loan forgiveness to continue, and considering the outrage the topic generated during the Biden administration, I cannot imagine that the decision is going to sit well with Republicans.
Trump has not only been trying to send troops to blue states, but he has also been threatening to cut off federal funding if those jurisdictions do not cave to his demands.
Aside from the issue of overriding a governor on the National Guard, pulling funding that has been approved by Congress is illegal, and some Republicans are growing frustrated that Trump keeps using this issue as leverage.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) recently raised a very good point, stating, “You show me one blue state in America where you don’t have pockets, maybe even big pockets, of Republicans, of conservatives, of MAGA people, of pro-Trump. Do we not care about them?”
I know people are rolling their eyes the moment they see the name Murkowski, as she has been feuding with Trump since his first administration, but on this, she is right. Even when you look at the bluest states in the country, the only reason they are blue is because of the big cities they contain. The rest of the state’s districts are often all red.
Trump has started to use the U.S. military to take on drug cartels, and while many of us support the move, not everyone in Congress does, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) among the most notable resistors within the party.
Paul has ripped Trump on the topic, and he just did it again when he was asked if the president's strikes on drug boats are legal. He responded, “No, they go against all of our tradition. When you kill someone, you should know, if you’re not at war, not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name at least.”
He continued, “You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So all of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime.”
Trump has been playing semantics to justify the use of the military in this way, classifying cartels and drug gangs as terrorists and recently announcing that we are in an “armed conflict” with the cartels. Again, while I do support the strategy, Trump’s legal defense here is paper-thin, if it exists at all, and that will surely be tested if Democrats take back Congress.
When Trump suspended the student loan forgiveness program, the administration was sued by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), only recently settling the case.
The agreement will allow a “court-supervised plan” to speed up debt cancellation under an income-driven repayment program. This was Joe Biden’s baby, and I cannot imagine that Republicans are happy that Trump agreed to this deal.
AFT President Randi Weingarten stated, "For nearly a decade, the AFT has fought for the rights of student loan borrowers to be freed from the shackles of unjust debt -- and today, a huge part of that affordability fight was vindicated. This year, we took on the Trump administration when it refused to follow the law and denied borrowers the relief they were owed."
Unjust debt? The relief they are owed? Is that some kind of a joke? These people borrowed the money, just like people do for home and car loans, and they should have paid it back in full with no hit to the American taxpayer. But this program will wind up canceling some loans for people who have been paying them back only for a prescribed number of years. Unless I am misunderstanding the settlement terms, I just cannot get behind this deal.
