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President Donald Trump’s administration started out by recklessly firing thousands of federal workers through the DOGE program, without regard to performance and the cost to those employees and the citizens they served. Then he moved on to more deadly pursuits. He cut funds for USAID and wasted warehouses full of food; together, these actions are estimated to result in over 14 million deaths. 

This was followed by the “Big Beautiful Bill” that will slash Medicaid and SNAP benefits. This will result in millions of Americans losing their health care and low-income families having their food-support cut.

Trump also stopped the flow of weapons from the US to Ukraine, which emboldened the Russians to increase their drone-bombing of civilians across the besieged country. Now Trump has made noise about selling weapons to NATO to pass on to Ukraine, but no actual weapons have been delivered. He has not ended the war as promised. Instead, he has created uncertainty and done nothing to stop increased Russian aggression. 

As the Trump family dreams of building waterfront resorts in a de-populated Gaza, Bibi Netanyahu continues to level the buildings in Gaza, forcing Palestinians to scuttle from feeding station to feeding station while trying to avoid the bombing and deadly fire from the forces “overseeing” food delivery. The food coming into Gaza has been severely restricted, causing famine. The West Bank is also under Israeli siege. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wreaking havoc on the US health-care delivery system. He has mismanaged the measles outbreak, added confusion to vaccine programs, and now is messing with pregnant women’s access to pain and fever relief. 

It will be hard to calculate the number of deaths that will result from hollowing out government agencies that help citizens have a clean environment, provide health care to veterans, serve meals to seniors and students, and ensure the safety of drugs, meat, and water. We also face a future in which the US is embracing fossil fuels and abandoning green energy to China. The list could go on and on. 

All of this is happening in the name of a Christian-nationalist agenda financed by techno-broligarchs eager to break the system so they can scavenge the remnants and cash in while continuing to degrade services.

Perhaps the administration really doesn’t care how many people die. With AI and robotics, all of us obsolescing humans — Masters of the Universe types, of course, exempted — will be revealed as no-longer-needed consumers of goods, services, energy, and rare-earth minerals. 

While you’re here enjoying DonkeyHotey’s latest cartoon, please take a moment to read these articles on related topics: 

• Climate Change May Have Killed 16,469 People in Europe This Summer
• Political Violence and ICE Thuggery – Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
• Other DonkeyHotey cartoons