This week, Lisa and David talk about our visit to Washington, D.C.; Mitch McConnell hospitalized; French village says Hegseth not welcome for D-Day visit; UFC fight on South Lawn of White House; Judge orders Trump admin to restore altered museum and park sites signage; effects of killing USAID and other programs targeted by the Trump administration, including the effects on screwworm, and yet spending and deficits keep going up; SpaceX goes public despite massive losses; billions in additional funding for ICE and Border Patrol; is there really an Iran deal?; and more.
And yes, it was a preposterous idea; a combination of ludicrous logistics and wonderful ambition. It was a circus act of an event that managed to both thrill and enrage various segments of the populace, much like everything these days.- Dan Wetzel, ESPN on the UFC event at the White House
How to Oppose the Proposed Washington Arch
A Few of the Programs and Organizations Dismantled by the Trump Administration So Far
Alongside the dismantling of USAID, the Trump administration has significantly targeted and dismantled a wide range of federal agencies, international initiatives, and domestic programs. Key programs and organizations dismantled or drastically restructured include:
International & Humanitarian Aid
* Food for Peace: The U.S. Interagency Council on Government Efficiency (DOGE) dissolved the decades-old Food for Peace emergency food aid program and moved it to the Department of Agriculture, where its international crisis-response operations were scaled back or shifted.
* Global Health Programs: Significant changes hit global HIV and malaria programs, as the administration canceled thousands of grants and required recipient nations to negotiate smaller bilateral health deals under the America First Global Health Strategy.
Federal Agencies & Bureaucracy
* Department of Education: Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, severely slashing its workforce and fragmenting its responsibilities and authorities across four other federal agencies.
* Federal Executive Institute: The administration eliminated this long-standing agency, which was previously used to provide bureaucratic leadership training to civil servants.
* CISA Election Security Office: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) election security office was eliminated entirely following accusations of ideological bias.
Environmental & Domestic Programs
* Climate & Ocean Observation: The administration dismantled major climate programs, including the Biden-era Climate Corps, and shut down parts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ocean monitoring initiatives.
* Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: The administration severely restricted operations at the CFPB, which was accused of funneling cash to left-wing advocacy groups.
Public Media Programs
* Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB): The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has been completely dissolved. Unlike agencies that were merely restructured, the CPB’s board of directors voted to shut down and liquidate the organization after 58 years of operation Rather than contiunue as an empty shell vulnerable to outside political control. The central entity used to distribute federal money to over 1,500 local public radio and TV stations is gone permanently. The loss of CPB infrastructure resulted in the immediate elimination of long-standing federal grants for PBS Kids educational programming
* United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM): The administration launched an executive order aimed at entirely dismantling the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the independent federal umbrella agency responsible for all U.S. government-funded international broadcasting.
* Voice of America (VOA) Blockade: The administration effectively shut down operations at Voice of America by locking out staffers, freezing its website, suspending contractors, and forcing over 1,000 employees onto mandatory paid leave. Under Trump’s appointee Kari Lake, VOA went largely dark for a full year. In March 2026, a D.C. District Court judge ruled the administration’s actions unlawful, ordering the government to immediately bring VOA back to life and reinstate its staff, though the administration has filed notice to appeal the ruling.
* Surrounding International Networks: The administration targeted funding and locked doors at sister networks like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN). RFA was forced to downsize operations, cutting staff and auctioning off broadcasting equipment.
* Next Generation Warning System (NGWS): The administration unilaterally clawed back $885 million in enacted FEMA funding. This money was strictly designated for the Next Generation Warning System, which leverages local public television and radio towers to broadcast emergency weather alerts to remote, rural, and Indigenous areas.
Added Context For The Flesh-eating Parasite, Screwworm
The historical battle to stop the New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax) from migrating northward is considered one of the greatest achievements in agricultural history. For over a century, this flesh-eating parasite devastated livestock across North America, driving the U.S. government to launch a multi-decade biological warfare campaign to push the species entirely out of the continent.
Before its initial eradication, the screwworm cost the U.S. livestock industry over $200 million annually in the mid-20th century.
The U.S. successfully eliminated its indigenous screwworm population by 1966. However, because the fly is highly migratory and carried northward by monsoon winds, the U.S. could not simply protect its own border. The USDA had to progressively push the species southward, forming massive international coalitions.
To keep the parasite from migrating back into Central and North America, the USDA and Panama’s Ministry of Agriculture Development formed COPEG (the Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm). They built a specialized production facility in Panama that breeds, sterilizes, and air-drops up to 15 million sterile flies per week over the Darién Gap jungle. This created a permanent biological barrier that successfully held back South American screwworm populations for over two decades.
The intersection of USAID and the recent United States screwworm outbreak involves several key developments:
* Program Cuts: Recent federal budget changes—including cuts to USAID focused on foreign monitoring and containment programs in Central America—have limited the scope of regional sterile-fly release programs.
* Political Scrutiny: Following the discovery of screwworm cases in Texas and New Mexico, lawmakers have raised concerns that cutting personnel and foreign surveillance through USAID hindered the country’s ability to detect and stop the parasite further south.
Added Context for Additional ICE Funding
Last year’s Big Beautiful Bill allocated $170 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security through 2029. That figure increased by an additional $70 billion on June 10. The scale of this funding signals that immigration enforcement activity in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis is likely to remain significant through the remainder of Mr. Trump’s term—and could intensify further.
The sheer scale of this funding—$240 billion committed through 2029—raises questions that go beyond border security. Money at this magnitude doesn’t just enforce existing policy; it builds institutional capacity that outlasts any single enforcement priority.
For context, the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons budget was $8.6 billion in FY 2025—less than a third of what ICE alone received in this package.
To appreciate what these numbers mean, some historical grounding helps. ICE’s annual budget grew from $3.4 billion in 2004 to $9.2 billion in 2024—a substantial increase over two decades. CBP’s budget grew from $4.9 billion to $20 billion over that same period. The Big Beautiful Bill didn’t accelerate that trend so much as shatter it. The roughly $30 billion allocated to ICE for tracking, arresting, and deporting immigrants represents a 300 percent increase over ICE’s entire prior-year budget. Put another way, Congress delivered in a single bill what would have taken, at the previous rate of growth, the better part of a generation. For context, the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons budget was $8.6 billion in FY 2025—less than a third of what ICE alone received in this package. And critically, because this funding was passed through reconciliation rather than the normal appropriations process, it sits largely outside the annual congressional oversight that would ordinarily apply. That’s not just a spending story. It’s a governance one.
Detention infrastructure is the most immediate concern. Rapid expansion of detention capacity, particularly through private contractors with limited federal oversight, has historically produced conditions that courts have found inadequate. More beds, more facilities, and more contracted personnel do not automatically mean more accountability—and the funding structure of the Big Beautiful Bill does little to change that calculus.
Birthright citizenship presents a different kind of risk. The administration’s executive order challenging the 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee remains tied up in courts, but a well-funded enforcement apparatus could create de facto statelessness for children born here to undocumented parents long before any legal question is settled—simply through the accumulation of administrative pressure and documentation barriers.
Perhaps most worth watching is the question of scope creep. Enforcement agencies given expansive mandates and historic levels of funding have, in the past, drifted toward targets of opportunity. The current administration has already drawn scrutiny for actions against student visa holders whose primary offense appears to have been political speech. Whether that represents isolated incidents or an emerging pattern is a question this funding makes harder, not easier, to answer.
Links:
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This Week in Outrage Substack (outrageoverload.net/twio)
Residents of French village say US defense chief Hegseth not welcome for D-Day visit (France24)
UFC at the White House perfectly fits the America of today -- love it or hate it (ESPN)
Judge orders restoration of National Park changes made by Trump administration (PBS)
SpaceX is coming to your 401(k) — maybe (CNN)
What ICE plans to do with billions in funding (America)
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