In case you haven’t heard, Colorado Springs has been laid at the altar of Trump.
In mid-March, while attending the National League of Cities, Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade met with President Trump’s staff at the Intergovernmental Office of Affairs. During that meeting, he offered the city as a guinea pig.
He told the Gazette his “big ask” was for the administration to “consider Colorado Springs one of the top partners when they need feedback … in connecting to cities like ours or they’re testing thing [sic] out.”
What does that mean, exactly?
Asked to elaborate, a city spokesperson said the mayor wants the city “to have an open dialogue with the White House,” and that he’s hoping that Trump officials look to Colorado Springs “for feedback before executive orders are given to avoid any possible negative impacts to our community.” [The spokesperson’s emphasis.]
You have to wonder: Has Mayor Yemi been paying attention at all?
It’s natural for a person like Mayor Yemi, whose roots lie in Christian ministry, to expect the best of people. But it’s time to face reality. Trump is not our savior.
With Easter right around the corner, I can’t help but think of the story of salvation and redemption – and betrayal. When dealing with Trump, remember Judas Iscariot.
All indicators point to Trump’s utter disregard for what anyone thinks, except maybe his billionaire enabler and demolition artist, Elon Musk, and other billionaires. Oh, and also Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin.
Given his slaughter of nearly every federal department in record time since his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has shown himself to be a despot who cares little about the “negative impacts” to the nation, states, cities and citizens.
Tens of thousands of federal employees have been laid off, and there’s more to come. He’s trying to destroy our legal system, for goodness sakes, whether by ignoring court rulings or threatening sanctions on law firms that file cases against him and his actions.
Do not obey in advance. – Timothy Snyder
So, clearly, Trump isn’t interested in feedback. He’s not interested in testing. And he’s definitely not interested in assessing any potential negative impact due to his imperial edicts, also known as executive orders.
Did Trump and his crew of destruction – in the name of ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse – ponder outcomes of the massive layoffs, or the freezing of payments to international programs to end human suffering, or the deep-sixing of hundreds of millions of dollars in medical and scienti f ic research that translates to saving lives and improving quality of life for everyone?
Even when the stock market cratered due to Trump’s crazy tariffs scheme, wiping out huge sums from people’s retirement savings, did he seek “feedback”? I didn’t hear any “open dialogue.”
In any event, what would this so-called “testing” look like?
How about testing what impact the city would experience if all Social Security recipients here had their benefits cut in half, or abolished altogether? How about shuttering the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Colorado Springs, which hosts one of the largest military and veteran populations in the country? How about commandeering Weidner Field as a detention center for undocumented workers? Or banning vaccines of all kinds? How about pulling all federal money from the city, which, according to the daily newspaper, has an estimated $425 million in projects that rely on federal funding?
These things might seem far-fetched, but with this administration, it’s anything goes – so be careful what you wish for, Mayor Yemi.
Which calls to mind the first rule when facing an authoritarian: “Do not obey in advance,” as advised by Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University in his best-seller “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”
Here’s another piece of advice, from the late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who made it his mission to remind the world of just how extreme a totalitarian can get: “Always take sides. Neutrality helps the aggressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
But now it seems that Mayor Yemi has taken the side of the MAGA world. And he, sadly, is not the only one.
City Council President Randy Helms whole-heartedly endorses the mayor’s outreach. “It is good for our Mayor and City to be a good partner with President Trump’s administration like we were with President Biden’s administration,” he says via text message. He adds it’s important for Mobolade to have “a direct line” with the White House “to provide timely feedback … on both the positive and negative impacts of these executive orders.”
Then, there’s our own Congressman Jeff Crank from the 5th District, who told the Gazette recently that “I look forward to working with the president to protect education funding,” and, therefore, he supports Trump’s annihilation of the Department of Education.
This is a guy who dodges town hall meetings to avoid answering citizens’ questions. He has to retreat to an audio version or not show up at all.
Crank, like most GOP lawmakers, can’t summon the guts to oppose a dictator-in-chief for fear of losing his political life of distinction, the taxpayers be damned. And by the way, Rep. Crank, nobody works with Trump; they only work for him. And if they refuse or hold a different belief? Well, they might soon be issued a one-way ticket to El Salvador.
