Hawaii Tribune-Herald-opinion

As Donald J. Trump returns to the role of U.S. president, many Americans ask themselves a simple question: Will his administration protect their pocketbooks, their way of life and their health?

President Donald Trump was so very wrong to grant clemency to every convicted criminal who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in pursuit of his incendiary lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The horrific violence of that day was all about Trump, who ignited the fire, but each person who followed him and then broke the law bears their own responsibility. His presidential pardons and commutations for his loyalists unjustly lifts that responsibility.

President Donald Trump delivered a direct, to the point speech from the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol that made it precisely clear what he intends to do over the next four years, starting immediately, to fix what he called a “crisis of trust” in government.

Donald Trump on Monday took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and then promptly broke that oath by seeking to revoke the first sentence of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Artificial intelligence has been heralded as a technological revolution that will transform our world. From curing diseases to automating dangerous jobs to discovering new inventions, the possibilities are tantalizing. We’re told that AI could bring unprecedented good — if only we continue to invest in its development and allow labs to seize precious, finite natural resources.

If Donald Trump has a natural environment, it is cognitive dissonance. Nowhere was that on display more than the moment in his inauguration speech when he said, “I want to be a peacemaker and a unifier.” No American politician for 50 years has thrived more on strife and division than Trump.

In an updated projection, the Congressional Budget Office moved up its estimate for when deaths will outpace births, putting that event horizon only eight years away, in 2033. That would mean a country suffering from the particular malaise that’s afflicted Japan, Norway, the U.K. and elsewhere: an aging population with a dwindling worker base, essentially an economic ticking time bomb. But our saving grace is immigration and the Golden Door must be kept open.

The biggest obstacle to the expansion of renewable energy is not Donald Trump. It’s the need for improvements to the U.S. electric grid.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, desperate to appear as if he’s leading on the wildfire debacle, now tacitly admits that his state’s onerous regulatory apparatus represents an obstacle to blaze victims hoping to eventually reclaim their lives. Rather than a total overhaul, though, he prefers to nibble around the edges.

With the public release of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the saga of Donald Trump’s federal prosecution for election interference has come to an end, less than a week before he’s sworn in to a second term. That it was short-circuited before trial is partly the fault of Garland, who waited nearly two years after the horrific Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a Trump-stoked mob to appoint Smith.

Life is a series of moments: some happy, some funny, some frightening, some sad. As I grow older, I find that certain moments stand out in my mind. There are the seminal moments, of course: exchanging wedding vows, attending funerals, walking across the stage at commencement. These kinds of things are usually easy to remember, but I am more taken by memories of smaller moments. I am sure a psychologist or neurologist could explain why we remember what we do, but I actually like the wonder and serendipity of it all.

On top of the human tragedy they’re still inflicting, the Los Angeles wildfires are exposing a gap between what people thought their homes were worth and what they’ll actually get from insurance companies when those houses have been reduced to ash. Potentially thousands of homeowners are learning it won’t be nearly enough.

For the second time this month, former first lady Michelle Obama is snubbing Donald Trump, yet another sign that sore loser Democrats can’t handle Trump’s election victory.

Just how far President-elect Donald Trump will press his promises on trade and economic policy once he takes office is hard to say. One thing is already apparent: The harms won’t be limited to the direct consequences of his actual policies. Even if his commitments in the end amount to little, they’re already burdening companies, unsettling financial markets and confounding prudent monetary policy.

Jan. 6 this year marked not just the anniversary of the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, but the actual counting of the electoral votes in Congress (by the loser of the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris).

The heroes and victims of 9/11 who are suffering terrible and sometimes lethal medical problems from exposure to the toxic cloud that arose when Al Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center have a right to know what City Hall knew decades ago about the environmental risks from Ground Zero. Any records being held by New York City and its agencies must be disgorged.

Donald Trump has endlessly complained about the Department of Justice abusing its wide-reaching powers to make improper political attacks on him. But it was the DOJ under Trump himself that did exactly that to the Democratic governors of New York and New Jersey in late October 2020, violating department policy. So says the DOJ’s own independent inspector general.

Los Angeles is a topographical wonderland. Mountains loom in the distance. Hillsides and canyons are the refuge of hikers and dog-walkers. Beaches and bluffs above the coastline beckon. Into this wilderness we have threaded our neighborhoods and streets, not to mention freeways, making it a mix of the wild and the urban. We are the only megacity in the world that has mountain lions roaming the streets; only Mumbai and its leopards even compare. Here, mountain lions mostly hide during the day but come out at night, caught on doorbell cameras’ video slinking into backyards and hopping fences.

Mark Zuckerberg can do with his social media giant Meta as he pleases and he aims to please the prevailing views of the federal government. The return of Donald Trump to the White House coincides with the naming of key Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White to its board and abruptly deciding to move away from using fact-checking partners to combat the spread of disinformation and loosened its hate speech rules and also scrapping DEI programs. We don’t see how this will improve the experience for the billions of users.

To say that President-elect Donald Trump has a lot of plans for his second term would be a gross understatement. He has vowed to implement the largest deportation operation in American history, secure the U.S.-Mexico border and negotiate a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia.