General Trump Resources: "Tracking Trump" (with links to a series of 10 weekly pages of links to items regarding the period from November 9, 2016 through January 17, 2017 (the President-elect period of Donald Trump's transition to the inauguration, January 20, 2017, and the presidency)
General Trump Resources: "Resources for Trump Watchers," February 11, 2017
"What Trump Needs to Know About Libel," May 1, 2017
"Collusion, Treason, Trump and Putin," April 5, 2017
"Who Are We?" January 31, 2017
"Republicans Need To Get Their Party Back From Trump," October 20, 2016 [published as column by Iowa City Press-Citizen]
"Law, Social Norms and Trump," October 2, 2016
"Donald Trump's Barrel of Squirrels," September 25, 2016
"Trump Might Not Be Blundering in Race," September 9, 2016 [published as a column by Iowa City Press-Citizen]
"Maybe This Explains Trump," August 15, 2016
"When Words Can Kill," August 10, 2016
"Why Trump May Win," July 25, 2016
"What Putin Can Teach Rastetter," May 9, 2016 [published as a column by The Daily Iowan]
How are Donald Trump's presidential years like the Afghanistan War?
We've been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001. We're still there -- one of America's longest, continuous wars. The Afghanistan War was initially our response to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. Why Afghanistan? For the same reason the fellow in the story who had lost a quarter was looking for it a block from where he'd dropped it. As he explained, "The light is better here." The 9/11 attack was primarily planned, funded, and executed by Saudis. Afghanistan had better light.
News from Afghanistan continues to dribble out: an attack on an American base here, our responsibility for civilian casualties there. But 14 years of details are forgotten, if not the next day, certainly by the next month. The only way to even try to make sense out of it is to wait for a book to weave those details into a storyl; or, at a minimum, read through a month or two's worth of all known details.
So it is with our new president. There are more details regarding what he's done and failed to do than we can even recall, let alone make sense out of. Indeed, given the Administration's penchant for secrecy and lack of transparency, and the President's ability to come up with multiple tweets and headlines a day to control the evening news and next day's papers, the media have done an extraordinary job bringing the audience as many of the details as they have.
The sources linked from this blog post are for those who, for whatever reasons, want to see the whole picture. They see the times we are living through as historically unique and potentially dangerous.
For those who, for these reasons, do believe they have a responsibility to keep a continuous eye on what Trump is doing, someone needs to bring the daily facts together for us.(1) There are concerns about Trump's personality and style, such as his attitudes, speech, and behavior regarding women. They see his troubling narcissistic personality traits, ease of factual misrepresentations, tendency to strike out against anyone not sufficiently admiring (including our global allies).
(2) There are concerns about his substantive policies regarding such things as immigration, healthcare, and the environment.
(3) But of all these concerns, and more, those that are of greatest importance are those that go to the heart of the ability of a self-correcting democracy to function: his disregard of centuries of American constitutional principles, legislation, and norms regarding the behavior of the president -- the authoritarian's technique of diminishing the people's regard for the media and judiciary; his almost total lack of education and experience regarding the role of government at any level, from local to NATO (and apparent disinterest in learning); his unwillingness to reveal his tax returns or establish a legitimate blind trust; his appointment of cabinet officers with similar lack of understanding and experience.
Following the election, from November 9, 2016 to January 20, 2017, I decided that one of those someones would be me -- at least for the days of President-elect Trump. It's called "Tracking Trump", a blog post covering weeks one and two, to which are linked four additional "pages" for weeks 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10 -- organized under topics such as "international," "appointments," and "temperament."
This took a substantial amount of "opportunity time" away from other high-priority tasks which had to be postponed. So I decided to make President-elect Trump's weeks the finite period of time to be covered by my own efforts, and look for other sources of comparable efforts regarding President Trump's first 100 days -- or four years. With credit to Julie Johnson for her early efforts at ferreting out most of these sources, here are some you may find useful. I'd welcome your suggestions of more to add. And remember, it's never been more important to support the efforts of these media sources with our subscriptions!
New York Times, Politics
New York Times, "First 100 Days Briefing." Use https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html (substituting for 2017/02/09 the date desired) or search on "First 100 Days Briefing" on the Times' opening page search field.
Washington Post, Politics
Washington Post, Politics, White House
Lawfare Blog (excellent source for associated legal issues discussion)
The Guardian: "The First 100 Days of Trump; Tracking the 45th President of the United States, One Day at a Time"
ProPublica, "The Trump Administration" (November 18, 2016-present)
New York Magazine, Daily Intelligencer: Eric Levitz, "All the Terrifying Things That Donald Trump Did Lately,"
Euronews: "This is What Trump Has Done So Far"
Politico: "Forty Five: A Daily Diary of the Trump Presidency"
Politico: "Handicapping Trump’s first 100 days; Trump’s campaign promises have run into trouble with his own party — even his own Cabinet members — before he even takes the oath of office," January 20, 2017
YAHOO! Style: Natalie Gontchrova, "Everything That's Happened Since Trump Took Office,"
Ray Giles' "Trump Campaign Promises Monitor"
USA TODAY: "On Politics: President Trump's executive actions: The complete list so far"
Los Angeles Times: "Here's everything Donald Trump has tweeted since he became president"
"Russia: Trump & His Team's Ties to Russia," Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif. 15th Dist.)
