In poker, four of a kind beats just about everything.
But this isn’t about gambling with chips or betting on cards, it’s about gambling with the country’s future.
It’s about how four-of-a-kind senators could beat President Donald Trump at the dangerous game he is playing with the nation’s economy and people’s lives. No surprise, it’s just like Trump to gamble with everyone else’s money, livelihood and families but his own.
The guy’s been dealing from the bottom, making up new rules as he plays the game from the Oval Office, and it’s time that four senators — at least four — take the deck out of his hands.
The stakes are too high for the country— and getting higher.
Trump has ignored congressional appropriations; dismissed court orders he does not like; closed agencies and programs authorized by Congress; stuck his vindictive political nose in places where it doesn’t belong; presided over the firings of thousands of federal workers; and given Elon Musk the access codes to everything and everywhere but Fort Knox, the nation’s nuclear missile silos and the president’s personal MyMcDonald’s Rewards account.
The Trump/Musk administration has frozen, stalled, reduced, canceled or obliterated countless programs, including the Tlingit and Haida Central Council’s annual distribution of herring roe and salmon to Southeast Alaska communities.
The White House and its hand-picked disciples scattered around government have taken aim at medical research, student loans, housing assistance, public libraries, public radio stations, parks and recreation volunteers in Sitka and Girl Scouts camp volunteers in Anchorage, even a federal health program for survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
His tariffs are so far-reaching and far-fetched that no one knows what will come next or how they will drive up the cost of living for Americans.
All the while, the Republican-controlled U.S. House has cheered on the commander in chief and his sidekick, the cutter in chief.
The Republican-controlled Senate has cheered a little less loudly — probably because too many members are sitting on their hands much of the time.
According to the U.S. Constitution, Congress is an equal branch of government, along with the executive branch and the courts, but since Trump returned to power in January, Congress has barely served as a twig, much less a full branch. Republicans are so afraid of the president, his supporters and social media posts that they are hiding under the tree, too scared to shake a stick.
It would take just four senators to stand up at the table, take the cards away from the president and announce that the house — the White House — does not win every hand. There are 53 Republican senators in the 100-member chamber. The four of a kind could stay loyal to their Republican values while putting people before politics.
Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican since birth in 1957 in Ketchikan, is choosing her battles carefully, while publicly criticizing Trump on multiple occasions. There is safety in numbers at the table, and if more senators would join Murkowski and vote against Trump’s actions, he might stop cheating at cards.
Former U.S. House Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney spoke last week at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Cheney, no fan of Trump’s sleight-of-hand shuffles, said her party has betrayed its convictions and the Constitution to become “a personality cult” loyal to Trump.
“You have one good senator,” Cheney said of Alaska.
The country needs at least three more.
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