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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.

— Stephan

SCHWARTZ REPORT PODCAST

Schwartz Report Episode 52: Secrets of Happiness

Trump administration orders consumer protection agency to stop work, closes building

Stephan: 

Did you vote for Trump? Is you did you are reasonable and complicit in the end of all consumer protection against scams. Your bank has implemented new fees, your credit card corporations have done the same? You were deceived into paying money for some benefit you didn’t get? Trump is a scammer with a long history of deceit, and he has not removed any protection you have so his fellow scammers can deceive and cheat you. Aren’t you glad you voted for a convicted criminal for President?

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters which has now been closed. Credit: Britannica

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down an agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal.

Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB, in a Saturday night email confirmed by The Associated Press, to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama pushed to include it in the 2010 financial reform legislation that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

The email also ordered the bureau to “cease all supervision and examination activity.”

On Sunday, administration officials also said that the CFPB’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. would be […]

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‘Sabotaging the American empire’: Paul Krugman explains how MAGA ‘destroyed’ US moral authority

Stephan: 

“Emperor” Trump and his coup vassals are destroying America’s stature in the world. Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman spells it out.  The United States will neither be respected or trusted, and it will change the whole structure of geopolitics. The effects of this I believe will last for at least a generation, and if you travel outside of America you will experience this loss of status personally..

Economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman

In an October 16, 2023 column for the New York Times, liberal economist Paul Krugman lamented the decline the “Pax Americana” and argued that MAGA Republicans were to blame. The term “Pax Americana” refers to a period of relative stability in the West following World War 2, and that stability, according to the concept, was encouraged by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

A lot has happened politically since Krugman wrote that column. Donald Trump won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign following a widely criticized debate with Trump, Republicans flipped the U.S. Senate, and Trump narrowly defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the general election before returning to White House on January 20, 2025.

Krugman revisits the “Pax Americana” subject in an article posted on his Substack page on February 10, warning the stability of the West is in serious danger during Trump’s second presidency. And Krugman is highly critical of the “destruction of” the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which, […]

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States With More Maternal-Fetal Specialists Had Lower Rates of Maternal Death

Stephan: 

The Dobbs decision has had an impact on the wellbeing of women that is not getting anywhere near the media or political attention it should. If you are a fertile woman living in a Red State and planning to have a child your life and the life of your fetus are at much higher risk than if you live in a Blue State. Why? Because maternal-fetal medicine physicians are leaving those MAGAt-controlled states. It has gotten so bad in some MAGAt areas that they have become what are called “medical deserts.” The difference is so notable that if you are a woman seeking to get pregnant I would recommend that you stay with friends or family in a Blue state for the term of your pregnancy and delivery.

Baptist Health Center OB/GYN unit Credit: Baptist Health

AURORA, COLORADO — States with more maternal-fetal medicine physicians had lower rates of maternal mortality, according to a cross-sectional analysis of nearly 15 million births.

States with a low density of these specialists had an adjusted maternal mortality rate of 24.25 per 100,000 live births compared with 16.96 per 100,000 live births for states with a high density (incidence rate ratio 0.70, 95% CI 0.58-0.85), reported Tetsuya Kawakita, MD, MS, of Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, during a presentation at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicineopens in a new tab or window annual meeting.

In addition, stillbirth rates were also numerically lower in states with a high density of maternal-fetal medicine physicians: 5.85 per 100,000 births versus 6.17 and 6.19 per 100,000 for states with low and moderate density, respectively.

New York and Massachusetts had the highest maternal-fetal medicine physician density, followed by other Northeast states as well as Hawaii and Alaska. Conversely, the Southeast had the lowest density, with Tennessee having the highest rate of […]

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Trump removes top government ethics czar

Stephan: 

“Emperor” Trump is committed to the destruction of American democracy, and he does not want to be bothered by anyone reporting his, and his vassals, lack of ethics and ongoing criminality. So what to do? The answer is simple: eliminate any ethical oversight of their ongoing coup. And that is exactly what criminal Trump has done. This article describes it. Meanwhile, the majority of the American people placidly look on approvingly as the CBS poll I published yesterday made clear.

David Huitema, Director of the Office of Government Ethics, at his office in Washington, January 2, 2025. 
Credit: Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters

President Donald Trump removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics from his post, the agency said Monday – the latest example of Trump acting against a government watchdog.

The agency’s director, David Huitema, was confirmed to the post by the Senate in November and officially began the job in December. He had been nominated by President Joe Biden but had languished for more than a year in the Senate before lawmakers confirmed him by a 50-46 vote during a post-election lame-duck session.

OGE directors typically serve five-year terms – allowing them to overlap administrations as part of an attempt to reduce partisanship. On Monday, a statement on the agency website read: “OGE has been notified that the President is removing David Huitema as the Director of OGE. OGE is reverting to an Acting Director.”

In an interview with CNN, Huitema said he was notified of his removal by the Presidential Personnel Office through an email […]

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CBS News poll — Trump has positive approval amid “energetic” opening weeks; seen as doing what he promised

Stephan: 

It has become very clear that unlike Europeans or Asians or Latin Americans, the people of the United States have never lived under a christofascist authoritarian rule, and most of us seem incapable of understanding what is happening with the coup. Or maybe they support it as this CBS News survey suggests? Either way, the country we have grown up in has ended. Not theoretically, but factually. I guess it is just going to take a lot of suffering and misery, as it did in Europe before Americans get why democracy matters and are out in the streets by the millions protesting every day.

With most describing him as “tough,” “energetic,” “focused” and “effective” — and as doing what he’d promised during his campaign — President Trump has started his term with net positive marks from Americans overall.

Many say he’s doing more than they expected — and of those who say this, most like what they see. Very few think he’s doing less.

His partisans and his voters, in particular, say he’s got the right amount of focus on matters like ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and deporting those who are in the country illegally. 

His deportation policy finds majority approval overall — just as most voters said they wanted during the campaign — and that extends to sending troops to the border, too.

But one key issue looms: Most Americans say the administration isn’t focused enough on lowering prices. Inflation was a key reason Mr. Trump won the election. 

trump-describe.png

During the 2024 campaign, voters picked many of these labels in describing Mr. Trump, and today, the percentages for them find similar or higher levels among Americans overall. 

And a large majority […]

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America’s Crisis of Morality

Stephan: 

John Alexander gets it exactly right in my opinion. As I said in my previous comment, American democracy has ended, not as a political opinion but as an historical fact. If you are not doing something to speak out in some way against what is happening you are complicit.

American democracy in crisis. Credit: The Guardian

America is in crisis. Precipitated by the slimmest plurality, American voters chose to reject the values of honesty, integrity, compassion and morality for governance by greed, autocracy, and lawlessness. Repeatedly we were warned. The warnings of astute scholars of history fell on deaf ears as tens of millions of voters who followed the pied piper, a charismatic, mentally unstable criminal who bewitched them into believing he had their interests at heart.  Consciously those voters chose the path leading to authoritarianism and the dismantling of the established U.S. Government. This is not the first time morality has faltered with dire consequences.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler was elected Chancelor of Germany. Following the death of Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler merged the position of Chancellor and President and became Fuhrer. Post the Great Depression, the vast majority of the German people who voted for Hitler were concerned about their personal economic conditions.  Most of them were morally good people of Christian faith. They had no thoughts that only a few years later Germany would be exterminating people on an industrial scale.  It was only gradually […]

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‘He’s Building a Concentration Camp’: Fears Grow as Images Emerge of Offshore Prison at Gitmo

Stephan: 

The Trumpian coup, like all fascist movements, is building a concentration camp for the people it wants to persecute. And, of course, they’re putting it in a location where none of their opponents can oversee what is happening. The Nazis did the same thing. Think about it:  30,000 people are going to be trapped in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a portion of Cuba the U.S. simply took from the Cuban people decades ago, and holds under military security. That tells us something else. It will, of course, require military service personnel, so it is also clear that the military itself is being conscripted into fascism with a Secretary of Defense who will be totally complicit.

“An open-air tent facility was rising on a field near the base’s Marine barracks,” reads the NYT caption, “housing for foreign laborers and crude sanitary stations. The edge of the base’s airfield can be seen in the distance.”
Credit: Screenshot via NYTimes of photo taken by Doug Mills, embedded with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem

“There’s no reason to build this in Guantánamo unless you want to do things you don’t think you could get away with on the U.S. mainland. It’s easy to put tents in Florida. But they’re putting them in Cuba. Ask yourself why.”

Fears are growing that the offshore U.S. detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba are an ominous sign for what President Donald Trump has in store as he further disregards the rule of law and normalizes actions that previously would have been unthinkable or faced immediate, bipartisan opposition in Congress.

After the first pictures emerged Saturday of still unidentified persons transferred to the island from the U.S. mainland by immigration officials, progressive journalist Nathan Robinson was among those raising the alarm, 

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Trump rescinds $4B in US pledges for UN climate fund

Stephan: 

Fascist Trump isn’t very bright (as anyone will conclude who actually examines the history of his life) but he is very greedy and obsessed with being in control. So part of the coup he and the Republicans are carrying out is to serve their petroleum oligarch funders and block any sensible preparation for climate change. That several hundred million Americans will suffer as a result of what the coup is doing, is of no interest to them.

The U.S. withdrawal follows President Donald Trump’s order revoking and rescinding the country’s federal climate finance program. | Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

The Trump administration has canceled $4 billion in U.S. pledges to the world’s largest climate fund — gutting a U.N. initiative helping over 100 countries adapt to the rapidly changing world.

“The government of the United States rescinds any outstanding pledges to the Green Climate Fund,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a note dated Jan. 27, parts of which were seen by POLITICO.

The climate fund confirmed the decision. 

“We have been made aware that the United States of America has notified the United Nations of its decision to rescind outstanding pledges to the Green Climate Fund,” it said in a statement to POLITICO.

The move goes further than the first Trump Administration, which allowed pledges made by prior administrations to remain on the fund’s books. No other country has previously rescinded committed funds.

The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment. A U.N. official declined to comment.

The Green […]

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