Whitehouse Archives - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

March 19th, 2025 at 10:07am by Alex Miller

SCOTUS Smackdown: Roberts Rebukes Trump

On 18 March 2025, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts made a rare statement on the politics of the day, when he waded into a controversy over the deportation of hundreds of undocumented Venezuelan immigrants who had been characterized by the Trump administration as violent, dangerous gang members. The men were apprehended and removed from the country without due process, with no proof of guilt beyond the government’s say-so, then flown to a prison in El Salvador, which was paid to house them indefinitely.

February 24th, 2025 at 10:23am by Alex Miller

Trump’s First Thirty Days: Schlock & Awe

Donald J. Trump’s particular genius for creating chaos and mayhem was on full display in the first month after his second inauguration on 20 January 2025. A flurry of executive orders mandating everything from the end of birthright citizenship (a constitutionally enshrined right which requires an amendment ratified by three-fourths of the states to alter) to the quixotic renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” (and would you like Freedom Fries with that?) was just the beginning. Most of the heavy lifting of dismantling the federal government was consigned to Elon Musk and his fabricated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who has proceeded to reflexively fire or eliminate thousands of workers with civil service protections and close entire agencies without congressional authority. Freezes on funding, hiring, and dispensing approved funds have rounded out DOGE’s resume.

February 17th, 2025 at 01:59pm by Alex Miller

President Musk

Nobody elected him to anything, he is ineligible for the high office he apparently holds, his work in restructuring government is unsanctioned, unofficial, and unconstitutional. But Elon Musk has apparently effected a successful takeover of the US government, hostile or otherwise. The head of Donald Trump’s bogus DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk is behaving like a classic Doge, the medieval, autocratic rulers of Venice, arbitrarily cutting staff, stopping funding, and eliminating entire departments at whim.

January 24th, 2025 at 02:41pm by Alex Miller

Pardonpalooza

Monday, 20 January 2025 must have seen some sort of record for presidential pardons. That morning, as among his last official acts, outgoing President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to a spate of family members, former government officials, the entire staff of the January 6^th Committee, and Capitol Police officers who had given testimony in that investigation. I was unable to obtain the exact number, but it must have been in the hundreds, a prophylactic measure to ensure against future prosecution or harassment for people who had committed no crimes, but were likely to be targeted by the incoming administration for their political stance or connection to Biden.

January 6th, 2025 at 10:22am by Alex Miller

Trump 2.0: Crazy Like a Fox

Donald J. Trump’s second administration, taking power at noon on 20 January 2025 (by constitutional fiat, whenever the oath itself is taken), is likely to be a replay of the first term, only more so. In 2017 when he first assumed office, Trump was a newbie novice to the Washington scene; he appointed persons with experience and relative competence to help him run the government, individuals who had a respect for its institutions and norms, who served as guardrails on Trump’s wilder, wackier impulses.

January 2nd, 2025 at 02:58pm by Alex Miller

Aster-Obit: Jimmy Carter

On Sunday, 29 December 2024, former US president Jimmy Carter passed away peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia; at age 100, he was the longest-lived chief executive in US history. Carter had been in hospice care for nearly two years, since February of 2023, and had lost his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, that November. He also enjoyed the longest post-presidency, which was viewed, rightly or wrongly, as considerably more successful than his administration, with the Carter Center promoting democracy, advancing human rights and assisting disease eradication globally. Jimmy and Rosalynn also partnered with Habitat for Humanity in an annual home-building blitz, which the Carters joined personally.