The federal week in review:
1. Pres-Elect fires all Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day.
2. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES positions, or political appointee's salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State.
3. Senate schedules 6 simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Pres-Elect's first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest.
4. House GOP expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking ANY costs related to the repeal of the ACA.
5. Pres-Elect continues to throw the intelligence community under the bus to protect Putin, despite the growing mountain of evidence that the Russians deliberately interfered in our election.
6. Pres-Elect breaks a central campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall by asking Congress (in other words, us, the taxpayers) to pay for it.
7. Pres-Elect threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US.
8. House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department--for example, FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule based on lobbyists not science. Don't like that endangered species designation, Congress kills it.
This is not the way to govern a nation, any nation. It is not the way to govern the United States of America---not the way to be a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" when the majority of the people did not choose this administration as shown by the popular vote.
This is the way to overthrow a representative government and turn it into a dictatorship. In addition to those things listed above, various Republican legislators in several states and one in Congress have proposed laws that would make dissent--speaking out against any of these policies--a form of terrorism, to be treated the same as bombing something. The Speaker of the House refused to even accept (let alone look at) petitions presented that he knew he didn't agree with. The Senate Majority Leader has allowed confirmation hearings to proceed without any of the financial or other checking that he demanded when the President wasn't of his party: that is unethical and unfair. The GOP House has interfered with the Congressional Budget Office not just this time, but previously, whenever they wanted to keep secret the cost of their proposed actions: that is unethical, at the very root of financial impropriety.
Make clear to your elected representatives that you do not like this and will protest. And protest again. And stand against tyranny. If you go back and look at the list of grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence...and at what the Bill of Rights of our Constitution tries to assure would not happen again...those things on the list are a road map to overturning the foundations of our freedoms.
Our voting rights and our election process was more than tarnished--it was badly damaged by the range of things done to it in the past years by those who've pushed this agenda as well. Disenfranchising American citizens--requiring expensive and difficult and time-consuming proofs (after proofs after proofs) of eligibility. Gerrymandering to ensure that certain groups could not possibly elect a representative who truly represented them. Hacking (orchestrated outside the country with collusion from within. Voter intimidation, including armed men riding past voting places. This is a serious issue. It is a serious issue in every state, in every county, every community. And as a result, this nation's ability to stand proudly among others--to be the beacon it once was for a democratic form of government, for fair and honest elections--has disappeared. Everyone in the world knows that this election was not typical, was not fair, was not honest.