Trump Just Quietly Nuked Preschool, Weather Forecasts, and Public Service

Read about all the stuff from this week that he’s counting on you being too overwhelmed and burned out to notice.

Apr 20, 2025

Let me guess: you missed it. Not because you don’t care. But because the news cycle is now a nonstop demolition derby, and Donald Trump is flooring the gas pedal while the rest of us are choking on the smoke.

That’s the strategy, by the way.

To saturate the air with so many disasters that the sheer volume becomes its own kind of anesthesia. And while we’re playing whack-a-mole with outrage fatigue, Donald J. Trump—twice-impeached, felony-indicted, reality-TV fascist cosplayer turned wannabe dictator—is gutting the soul of this country with the cold precision of someone who’s learned that he can do anything, as long as he does everything.

Just this week alone the Tangerine Tyrant is:

Attempting to kill the entire Head Start program. Yes, the one that provides preschool to low-income children and that lifts generations out of poverty. The one that, in rural America, is often the only option for childcare. Gone. Zeroed out. In his new budget, the number under “Head Start”? A clean, cruel $0.

Pulling every AmeriCorps volunteer off their projects mid-week—no warning, no explanation. Just gone. Kids building homes for veterans, helping in disaster zones, mentoring in classrooms? Sent home like they were grounded.

Making efforts to fire the entire staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that protects regular people from credit card scams, predatory loans, and financial fraud.

Gutting the National Weather Service, leading to dangerous staff shortages during tornado season—and started monitoring employees’ communications so they can’t even warn the press.

This isn’t policy. It’s sabotage. It’s what happens when a weirdo dude who no one wanted to play with at recess somehow gets handed unchecked power. With no moral compass present in any of his “224 pounds” of rot, convicted felon Donald Trump has decided that the best way to lead is to burn every public good to the ground—and then punish anyone who screams “fire.”

The Trump Tactic: Overwhelm, Then Erase

There’s a name for what he’s doing. It’s called shock politics—overload the system with so many outrages that none of them stick.

It’s Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy in action, but this isn’t just rhetorical sewage. It’s real programs. Real people. Real lives.

You’d think eliminating preschool for poor kids would be enough to make national news. Or yanking disaster relief volunteers off active assignments. Or degrading the country’s weather forecasting ability right before hurricane season.

But in the Trump 2.0 era, each new act of cruelty drowns out the last.

You barely finish processing the death of AmeriCorps before you’re blindsided by a federal judge halting the sudden mass firing of CFPB employees, because yes—he tried that too. 1,500 people fired with 24 hours’ notice, all because they had the audacity to enforce financial regulations.

Here’s the thing that we’re all beginning to see as a an embarrassingly obvious play of the authoritarian hand: the cruelty isn’t a side effect. It’s the point.

Who Asked for This?

Nobody—and I mean nobody—was campaigning for this.

📢 Did you hear Trump say at his rallies back during campaign season, “I’m going to gut AmeriCorps!”?

📢 Were angry MAGA memaws in Walmart parking lots chanting, “No more preschool!”?

📢 Did Fox News run a week-long exposé on the horrors of affordable childcare?

No. Because none of this is what even his base asked for.

These attacks aren’t about serving the people. They’re about erasing the idea that government should serve the people at all. They’re about turning every institution that helps working-class Americans into collateral damage in Trump’s personal war against anything he can’t control.

He’s not trying to run the country. He’s trying to own it.

The War on the Future

Programs like Head Start and AmeriCorps aren’t just safety nets—they’re launchpads. They help kids learn, help young adults gain experience, and help communities recover from disaster. They are investments in our future.

So why target them?

Because authoritarianism isn’t just about control. It’s about despair. It’s about choking out hope before it can take root. It’s about making people believe there’s no future worth fighting for—just a past we need to “make great again.” Whatever the fuck that even means.

I thought these things went without saying—but clearly this week is a reminder to never make that assumption with this wackjob administration in power:

When you eliminate preschool, you kill opportunity before it begins.

When you gut national service programs, you destroy community before it can grow.

When you cripple weather forecasting, you put lives at risk.

And when you silence the people trying to warn us, you turn democratic decay into a quiet collapse.

This is not a drill. It’s not a test. It’s not a political stunt. It’s a regime dismantling every tool we have to help each other, to see the storm coming, and to rebuild after it hits.

And they want us too numb, too distracted, too overwhelmed, and too exhausted to stop it.

The Gaslight is Always On

While all of this is happening the GOP is still screaming about “government overreach” because somewhere, someone got student loan relief.

They’re still clutching their pearls over DEI programs and drag queens while the National Weather Service is being hollowed out.

We are living in a gaslight bonanza.

They’ll tell you this is about “fiscal responsibility,” but Trump is spending billions on tax cuts for billionaires and expanding surveillance tech.

They’ll say AmeriCorps is “bloated,” while they funnel billions into military contractors and build floating detention centers in the Gulf.

It’s not about money. It’s about power. It’s about punishing the public for depending on anything other than him.

So What Now?

During these times of fuckery—with our nervous systems that most likely will never know what being at peace feels like ever again—it’s so incredibly important to remember: the very programs he’s gutting were built by people who refused to feel hopeless.

Head Start was born from Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty—a program built on the radical belief that poor kids deserve to learn, to grow, and to thrive.

AmeriCorps was launched under Bill Clinton to give young people a way to serve their country and get an education.

The CFPB was created after the 2008 financial collapse because the government finally admitted the banks needed a damn leash.

Every one of these institutions was built out of crisis. And they can be rebuilt again—if we fight for them.

Because here’s the truth: Trump doesn’t fear opposition. He fears organizing. He fears solidarity. He fears the one thing that authoritarianism can never survive: a population that refuses to forget.

So make sure that you don’t forget this week. Don’t forget about the preschool kids, the AmeriCorps volunteers, the meteorologists, or the public servants.

And remember that you are the firewall.

This isn’t just about Trump. It’s about the future of public life. About whether we believe in a country that helps people live with dignity—or one that only protects the powerful.

So talk about it. Write about it. Protest. Donate. Organize.

Refuse to normalize. Refuse to be quiet. Refuse to be complicit.