Indivisible Chico

"This is what happens when you fire all the scientists" is becoming a disturbingly accurate explanation for a lot of things lately.

This side‑by‑side is a perfect snapshot of what real leadership looks like on the world stage — and what happens when the U.S. trades it away.

On top, President Obama at the 2015 G7 is relaxed, laughing, and literally surrounded by allies — you can see the trust, warmth, and ease of cooperation in the way other leaders lean in toward him. That’s what diplomacy looks like when America shows up prepared, respected, and ready to build consensus instead of chaos.

On the bottom, President Trump stands off to the side at the G7, isolated while other leaders huddle together talking without him, a visual metaphor for how he’s dragged the U.S. from global partner to global problem. The confusion on his face and the physical distance between him and everyone else say everything about how little respect and credibility he carries when it actually matters.

One image radiates connection, competence, and serious people doing serious work; the other radiates insecurity, alienation, and a president who looks like he has no idea what’s going on while the rest of the world moves on without him. Elections have consequences — not just for us at home, but for how the entire world engages with (or avoids) the United States.

Trump moves oversight of special education and civil rights out of the Education Department President Donald Trump’s administration is further dismantling the Department of Education, moving oversight of special education and civil rights to other agencies.

Elon Musk’s so‑called “Department of Government Efficiency” cut an effective screwworm monitoring program to “save” about $15 million a year — and within a year we’re staring down a screwworm crisis the USDA now expects to cost over a billion dollars to contain. That’s not efficiency, that’s sabotage.

Now we have confirmed screwworm cases in U.S. livestock and pets for the first time in about 60 years, and USDA is scrambling to rebuild capacity, rushing sterile fly facilities in Mexico and Texas and throwing more than a billion dollars at a problem we already knew how to prevent. This is what happens when you put a billionaire with no public‑health background and no respect for science in charge of hunting for cuts: he doesn’t see safeguards, he sees “inconvenient” line items that get in the way of his ideology and his bottom line.

And let’s be clear: DOGE was never just about “efficiency.” Trump’s order gave Musk’s operation sweeping access to federal data systems under the guise of streamlining government, with reports that DOGE‑linked operatives reached into sensitive databases at agencies like Social Security, OPM, Treasury, and Education. They were perfectly willing to ignore privacy protections that have been on the books for 50 years — but when it came to a relatively tiny $15 million program that protected ranchers, rural communities, and the broader economy, suddenly that’s where they “tightened belts.”

This isn’t fiscal conservatism, it’s deliberate cruelty dressed up as cost‑cutting. The programs they kill are always the same ones: the ones that regulate corporate power, protect ordinary people, or quietly prevent the next catastrophe. And when the crisis hits — when cattle and goats in Texas and pets in New Mexico start turning up with a parasite we supposedly eradicated generations ago — they point fingers at anyone but themselves.

The neighborhood really has gone to crap recently.

Are we winning yet