Star Wars is back22win, with an executive order from President Trump that the White House said “directs the building of the Iron Dome missile defense shield for America.”
The order, issued on Monday night, didn’t quite do that. It was more a vaguely worded set of instructions to accelerate current programs or explore new approaches to defending the continental United States than a blueprint for arming the heavens with thousands of antimissile weapons, sensors and tracking devices.
But two blocks away, on the same evening, the Office of Management and Budget issued a 56-page spreadsheet that detailed the suspension of funding for thousands of programs. They included most of the major U.S. efforts to reduce the amount of nuclear fuel that terrorists might seize, to guard against biological weapon attacks and to manage initiatives around the globe to curb the spread of nuclear arms.
The two announcements seemed to encapsulate the administration’s conflicting instincts in its opening weeks. Mr. Trump wants to build big and take the Space Force he created to new heights, even at the risk of new arms races. That effort has been underway since Ronald Reagan’s day, with only mixed results.
But in its drive to shut down programs it believes could be creations of the so-called deep state, the administration wants to cut off funding for many programs that seek to reduce the chances of an attack on the United States — an attack that could very well come in forms other than a missile launched from North Korea,bw777 login China or Russia.
play now house of funA judge paused Mr. Trump’s spending freeze on Tuesday, but the president’s intentions are clear.
Though Mr. Trump calls his plan the Iron Dome, it has little if any resemblance to the Israeli system of the same name that has succeeded in destroying small missiles that move at a snail’s pace compared with the blinding speeds of intercontinental warheads.
But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.
His debunked claims about Haitian migrants stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, helped stir a firestorm over immigration in that community, which has dealt with bomb threats and evacuations after Mr. Trump made his comments.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.22win