Edit 1: More ARKQ buying today (~50k shares). Thank you everyone for the positive feedback and discussion!
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) or TL;DR for the non-military types:
LMT is a good target if you want to literally go to the moon, and my PT is $690.26 in two years (more than 2x from current levels). Justification and some possible trade ideas are listed below, just CTRL-F “Trade Ideas”. I hope you guys enjoy this work and would appreciate any discussion or feedback. I hope to catch you in the comments.
Team,
We interrupt today’s regularly scheduled short squeeze coverage to discuss a traditionally boring stock, LMT (Lockheed Martin), with significant upside potential. To be clear, this is NOT a short squeeze target like many reddit posts are keying on. I hope that this piece sparks discussion, but if you are just looking for short squeeze content, all I have to say is BUY, HOLD, and GODSPEED.
The source of inspiration for me writing this piece is threefold; first, retail investors are winning, and I believe that we will continue to win if we continue to identify opportunities in the market. In my view, the stock market has always been a place for the public to shine a light on areas of innovation that real Americans are excited about and proud to be a part of. Online communities have stolen the loudspeaker from hedge fund managers and returned it to decentralized online democracies that quickly and proudly shift their weight behind ideas they believe in. In GME’s case, it was a blatant smear campaign to destroy a struggling business. I think that we should continue this campaign by identifying opportunities in the market and running with them. It may sound overly idealistic, but if reddit can take on the hedge funds, I non-ironically believe that we can quite literally take good companies researching space technology to the moon. I think LMT may be one of several stocks to help get us there.
Second, a video where the Secretary of State of Massachusetts argues that internet boards are full of a bunch of unsophisticated, thoughtless traders really ticked me off. This piece is designed to show that ‘the little guy’ is ready to get into the weeds, understand business plans, and outpace analysts that think companies like Tesla are overvalued by comparing them to Toyota. That is a big reason that I settled on an old, large, slow growth company to do a deep-dive on, and try my best to show some of the abysmal predictive analysis major ‘research firms’ do on even some of the most heavily covered stocks. LMT is making moves, and the suits on wall street are 10 steps behind. At the time of writing this piece, Analyst Estimates range from 330-460 (what an insane range).
Third, and most importantly, I am in the US military, and I think that it is fun to go deep into the financials of the defense sector. I think that it helps me understand the long-term growth plans of the DoD, and I think that I attack these deep-dives with a perspective that a lot of these finance-from-day-one cats do not understand. Even if no one ever looks at this work, I think that taking the time to write pieces like this makes me a better Soldier, and I will continue to do it in my spare time when I am feeling inspired. I wrote a piece on Raytheon Technologies (Ticker: RTX) 6 months ago, and I think it was well-received. I was most convicted about RTX in the defense sector, but I have since shifted to believing LMT is the leader in the defense space. I am long both, though. If this inspires anyone else to do similar research on other companies, or sparks discussion in the community, that is just a bonus. Special shout-out to the folks that read more than just the TL;DR, but if you do just read the TL;DR, I love you too!
Now let us get into it:
Leadership
I generally like to invest in companies that are led by people that seem to have integrity. Jim Taiclet took the reins at LMT in June of last year. While on active duty, he served as a C-141B Starlifter pilot (a retired LMT Aircraft). After getting out he went to work for the American Tower Corporation (Ticker: AMT). His first day at American Tower was September 10, 2001. The following day, AMT lost 13 employees in the World Trade Center attack. He stayed with the company, despite it being decimated by market uncertainty in the wake of 9/11. He was appointed CEO of the very same company in 2004. Over a 16 year tenure as CEO of AMT the company market cap 20x’d. He left his position as CEO of AMT in March of last year, and the stock stagnated since his departure, currently trading at roughly the same market cap as to when he left.
Jim Taiclet was also appointed to be the chairman of the board this week, replacing the previous CEO. Why is it relevant that the CEO came from a massive telecommunications company?
Rightfully, Taiclet’s focus for LMT is bringing military technology into the modern era. He wants LMT to be a first mover in the military 5G space, military application of AI space, the… space space, and the hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) space. These areas are revolutionary for the boomer defense sector. We will discuss this in more detail later when we cover the company’s P/E multiple and why it is absolute nonsense.
It is not a surprise to me that they brought Taiclet on during the pandemic. He led AMT through adversity before, and LMT’s positioning during the pandemic is tremendous relative to the rest of the sector, thanks in large part to some strong strategic moves and good investments by current and past leadership. I think that Taiclet is the right CEO for the job.
In addition to the new CEO, the new Secretary of Defense, Secretary Lloyd Austin, has strong ties to the defense sector. He was formerly a board member for RTX. He is absolutely above reproach, and a true leader of character, but I bring this up not to suggest that he will inappropriately serve in the best interest of defense contractors, but to suggest that he speaks the language of these companies effectively. I do not anticipate that the current administration poses as significant of a risk to the defense sector as many analysts seem to believe. This will be expanded in the headwinds section below.
SPACE
Cathie Wood and the ARK Invest team brought a lot of attention to the space sector when the ARKX, The ARK Space Exploration ETF, Form N-1A was officially filed through the SEC. More recently, ARK Invest published their Big Ideas 2021 Annual Report and dedicated an entire 7-page chapter to Orbital Aerospace, a new disruptive innovation platform that the ARK Team is investigating. This may have helped energize wall street to re-look their portfolios and their investments in space technology, but it was certainly not the first catalyst that pushed the defense industry in the direction of winning the new space race.
In June 2018, then President Trump announced at the annual National Space Council that “it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space. So important. Therefore, I am hereby directing the Department of Defense (DoD) and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces". Historically, Department of Defense space assets were under the control of the Air Force. By creating a separate branch of service for the United States Space Force (USSF), the DoD would allocate a Chairman of Space Operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and clearly define the budget for space operations dedicated directly to the USSF. At present, this budget is funneled from the USAF’s budget. The process was formalized in December of 2019, and the DoD has appropriated ~$15B to the USSF in their first full year of existence according to the FY21 budget.
Among the 77 spacecraft that are controlled by the USSF, 29 of them are Lockheed Martin GPS satellites, 6 of them are Lockheed Martin Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS), and LMT had a hand in creating and/or manufacturing for several of the other USSF efforts. The Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Missile Warning Satellites (also known as Next-Gen OPIR) were contracted out to both Northrup Grumman (Ticker: NOC) and LMT. LMT’s contract is currently set at $4.9B, NOC’s contract is set at $2.37B.
Tangentially related to the discussion of space is the discussion of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs). HGVs have exoatmospheric and atmospheric implications, but I think that their technology is extremely important to driving margins down for both space exploration and terrestrial point-to-point travel. LMT is leading the charge for military HGV research. They hold contracts with the Navy, Air Force, and Army to develop HGVs and hypersonic precision fires. The priority for HGV technology accelerated significantly when Russia launched their Avangard HGV in December of 2019. Improving the technology for HGVs is a critical next-step in maintaining US hegemony, but also maintaining leadership in both terrestrial and exoatmospheric travel.
LARGE SCALE COMBAT OPERATIONS (LSCO)
The DoD transitioning to Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) as the military’s strategic focus. This is a move away from an emphasis on Counter-Insurgency operations. LSCO requires effective multi-domain operations (MDO), which means effective and integrated strategies regarding land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. To have effective MDO, the DoD is seeking systems that both expand capabilities against peer threats and increase the ability to track enemy units and communicate internally. This requires a modernizing military strategy that relies heavily on air, missile, and sensor modernization. Put simply, the DoD has decided to start preparing for peer or near-peer adversaries (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) rather than insurgencies. For this reason, I believe that increased Chinese and Russian tensions are, unfortunate as it may be, a boon to the defense industry. This is particularly true in the missiles/fires and space industry, as peer-to-peer conflicts are won by leveraging technological advantages.
There are too many projects to cover in detail, but some important military technologies that LMT is focusing on to support LSCO include directed energy weapons (lasers) to address enemy drone technology, machine learning / artificial intelligence (most applications fall under LMT’s classified budget, but it is easy to imagine the applications of AI in a military context), and 5G to increase battlefield connectivity. These projects are all nested within the DoD’s LSCO strategy, and position LMT as the leader in emergent military tech. NOC is the other major contractor making a heavy push in the modernization direction, but winners win, and I think a better CEO, balance sheet, and larger market cap make LMT the clear winner for aiding the DoD in a transition toward LSCO.
SECTOR COMPARISON (BACKLOG)
The discussion of LSCO transitions well into the discussion of defense contractor backlogs. Massive defense contracts are not filled overnight, so examining order backlogs is a relatively reliable way to gauge the interest of the DoD in a defense contractor’s existing or emerging products. For my sector comparison, I am using the top 6 holdings of the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (Ticker: ITA). I hate this ETF, and ETFs like it (DFEN) because of their massively outsized exposure to aerospace, and undersized allocation to companies like LMT. LMT is only 18% smaller than Boeing (Ticker: BA) but is only 30.4% of the exposure of BA (18.46% of the fund is BA, only 5.62% of the fund is LMT). Funds of this category are just BA / RTX hacks. I suggest building your own pie on a site like M1 Finance (although they are implicated in the trade restriction BS… please be advised of that… hoping other brokerages that are above board will offer similar UIs like the pie design… just wanted to be clear there) if you are interested in the defense sector.
The top 6 holdings of ITA are:
Boeing Company (Ticker: BA, MKT CAP $110B) at 18.46%
Raytheon Technologies (Ticker: RTX, MKT CAP $101B) at 17.84%
Lockheed Martin (Ticker: LMT, MKT CAP $90B) at 5.62%
General Dynamics Corporation (Ticker: GD, MKT CAP $42B) 4.78%
Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (Ticker: TDY, MKT CAP $13B) at 4.74%
Northrop Grumman Corporation (Ticker: NOC, MKT CAP $48B) at 4.64%
As a brief aside, please look at the breakdowns of ETFs before buying them. The fact that ITA has more exposure to TDY than NOC and L3Harris is wild. Make sector ETFs balanced how you want them to be balanced and it will be more engaging, and you will likely outperform. I digress.
Backlogs for defense companies can easily be pulled from their quarterly reports. Here are the current backlogs in the same order as before, followed by a percentage of their backlog to their current market cap. All numbers are pulled from January earning reports unless otherwise noted with an * because they are still pending.
Boeing Company backlog (Commercial: $282B, Defense: $61B, Foreign Military Sales (FMS, categorized by BA as ‘Global’): 21B, Total Backlog 364B): BA’s backlog to market cap is a ratio of 3.32, which is strong, but most of that backlog comes from the commercial, not the defense side. Airlines have been getting decimated, I am personally not interested in having much of my backlog exposed to commercial pressures when trying to invest in a defense play. Without commercial exposure, their defense only backlog ratio is .748. This is extremely low. I understand that this does not do BA justice, but I am keying in on defense exposure, and I am left thoroughly unsatisfied by that ratio. Also, we have seen several canceled contracts already on the commercial side.
Raytheon Technologies backlog (Defense backlog for all 4 subdivisions: 67.3B): Raytheon only published a defense backlog in this quarter’s report. That is further evidence to me that the commercial aerospace side of the house is getting hammered. They have a relatively week backlog to market cap as well, putting them at a ratio of .664, worse off than the BA defense backlog.
Lockheed Martin backlog (Total Backlog: $147B): This backlog blows our first two defense backlogs out of the water with a current market cap to backlog ratio of 1.63.
General Dynamics Corporation backlog (Total Backlog: $89.5B, $11.6B is primarily business jets, but it is difficult to determine how much of their aerospace business is commercial): Solid 2.13 ratio, still great 1.85 if you do not consider their aerospace business. The curveball here for me is that GD published a consolidated operating profit of $4.1B including commercial aerospace, whereas LMT published a consolidated operating profit of $9.1B. This makes the LMT ratio of profit/market cap slightly in favor of LMT without accounting for the GD commercial aerospace exposure. This research surprised me; I may like GD more than I originally assumed I would. Still prefer LMT.
Teledyne Technologies Incorporated backlog (Found in the earnings transcript, $1.7B): This stock is not quite in the same league as the other major contractors. This is an odd curveball that a lot of the defense ETFs seem to have too much exposure to. They have a weak backlog, but they are a smaller growing company. I am not interested in this at all. It has a backlog ratio of .129.
Northrop Grumman Corporation backlog ($81B): Strong numbers here. I see NOC and LMT as the two front-runners in the defense sector. I like LMT more because I like their exposure to AI, 5G, and HGVs more than NOC, but I think this is a great alternative to LMT if you like the defense sector. Has a ratio of 1.69, slightly edging out LMT on this metric. LMT edges out NOC on margins by ~.9%, though, which has significant implications when considering the depth of the LMT backlog.
The winners here are LMT, GD, and NOC. BA is attractive if you think anyone will have enough money to buy new planes. BA and RTX are both getting hammered by commercial aerospace exposure right now and are much more positioned as recovery plays. That said, LMT and NOC both make money now, and will regardless of the impact of the pandemic. LMT is growing at a slightly faster rate than NOC. Both are profit machines, but I like LMT’s product portfolio and leadership a lot more.
FREE CASH FLOW
Despite the pandemic, LMT had the free cash flow to be able to pay a $2.60 per share dividend. This maintains their ~3% yearly dividend rate. They had a free cash flow of $6.4B. They spent $3.9 of that in share repurchases and dividend payouts. That leaves 40% of that cash to continue to strengthen one of the most stalwart balance sheets outside of big tech on the street. Having this free cash flow allowed them to purchase Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.4B in December. They seem flexible and willing to expand and take advantage of their relative position during the pandemic. This is a stock that has little downside risk and significant upside potential. It is always reassuring to me to know that at the end of the day, a company is using its profit to continue to grow.
HEADWINDS
New Administration – This is more of an unknown than a headwind. The Obama Administration was not light on military spending, and the newly appointed SecDef is unlikely to shy away from modernizing the force. Military defense budgets may get lost in the political shuffle, but nothing right now suggests that defense budgets are on the chopping block.
Macroeconomic pressure – The markets are tumultuous in the wake of GME. Hedgies are shaking in their boots, and scared money weighed on markets the past week. If scared money continues to exert pressure on the broader equity markets, all boomer stocks are likely weighed down by slumping markets.
Non-meme Status – The stocks that are impervious to macroeconomic pressures in the above paragraph are the stonks that we, the people, have decided to support. From GME to IPOE, there is a slew of stonks that are watching and laughing from the green zone as the broader markets slip deeper into the red zone. Unless sentiment about LMT changes, I see no evidence that LMT will remain unaffected by a broader economic downturn (despite showing growth YoY during a pandemic).
TAILWINDS
Aerojet Rocketdyne to the Moon – Cathie Wood opened up a $39mil position in LMT a few weeks ago, and this was near the announcement of ARKX. The big ideas 2021 article focuses heavily on satellite technology, deep learning, and HGVs. I think that the AR acquisition suggests that vertical integration is a priority for LMT. They even fielded a question in their earnings call about whether they were concerned about being perceived as a monopoly. Their answer was spot on—the USFG and DoD have a vested interest in the success of defense companies. Why would they discourage a defense contractor from vertical integration to optimize margins?
International Tensions – SolarWinds has escalated US-Russia tensions. President Biden wants to look tough on China. LSCO is a DoD-wide priority.
5G.Mil – We still do not have a lot of fidelity on what this looks like, but the military would benefit in a lot of ways if we had world-wide access to the rapid transfer of encrypted data. Many units still rely on Vietnam-era technology signal technology with abysmal data rates. There are a lot of implications if the code can be cracked to win a DoD 5G contract.
TRADE IDEAS
Price Target: LMT is currently at a P/E of ~14. Verizon has roughly the same. LMT’s 5-year P/E ratio average is ~17. NOC is currently at a P/E of ~20. TSLA has a P/E Ratio of 1339 (disappointingly not 1337). P/E is a useless metric because no one seems to care about it. My point is that LMT makes a lot of money, and other companies that are valued at much higher multiples do not make any money at all. LMT’s P/E ratio is that of a boomer stock that has no growth potential. LMT’s P/E is exactly in line with the Aerospace and Defense Industry P/E ratio standard. LMT’s new CEO is pushing the industry in a new direction. I will arbitrarily choose a P/E ratio of 30, because it is half of the software industry average, and it is a nice round number. Plus, stock values are speculative and nonsense anyway.
Share price today: $321.82
Share price based on LMT average 5-year P/E: $384.08 (I see this as a short term PT, reversion to the mean)
Share price with a P/E of 30: $690.26
Buy and Hold: Simple. Doesn’t take much thought. Come back in a year or two and be happy with your tendies (and a few dividends to boot).
LEAPS Call Debit Spread (Based on last trade prices): Buy $375 C 20 JAN 23 for $26.5, Sell $450 C 20 JAN 23 for $12. Total Cost $14.5 for a spread width of $75. Max gain 517% per spread. Higher risk strategy.
LEAPS: Buy $500 C 20 JAN 23 for $7.20. Very high-risk strat. If the price target is hit within two years, these would be in the money $183 per contract for a gain of 2500%. This is the casino strat.
SOURCES
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2020/james-taiclet-from-military-pilot-to-successful-ceo.html
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/in-response-to-senator-warrens-questions-secretary-of-defense-nominee-general-lloyd-austin-commits-to-recusing-himself-from-raytheon-decisions-for-four-years
https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-08-30-Lockheed-Martins-Expertise-in-Hypersonic-Flight-Wins-New-Army-Work
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/hypersonics.html
https://research.ark-invest.com/hubfs/1_Download_Files_ARK-Invest/White_Papers/ARK%E2%80%93Invest_BigIdeas_2021.pdf?hsCtaTracking=4e1a031b-7ed7-4fb2-929c-072267eda5fc%7Cee55057a-bc7b-441e-8b96-452ec1efe34c
https://www.deseret.com/2018/6/19/20647309/twitter-reacts-to-trump-s-call-for-a-space-force
https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf
https://www.airforcemag.com/lockheed-receives-up-to-4-9-billion-for-next-gen-opir-satellites/
https://spacenews.com/northrop-grumman-gets-2-3-billion-space-force-contract-to-develop-missile-warning-satellites/
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/directed-energy/laser-weapon-systems.html
https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/lockheed-martins-ai-applications-for-the-military/
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/07/new-ceo-wants-lockheed-become-5g-playe167072/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/defense-firms-expect-higher-spending-11548783988
https://www.etf.com/ITA#efficiency
https://s2.q4cdn.com/661678649/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/4Q20-Presentation.pdf
https://investors.rtx.com/static-files/dfd94ff7-4cca-4540-bc4b-4e3ba92fc646
https://investors.lockheedmartin.com/static-files/64e5aa03-9023-423a-8908-2aae8c7015ac
https://s22.q4cdn.com/891946778/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/GD_4Q20_Earnings_Highlights-Outlook-Final.pdf
https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/27/teledyne-technologies-inc-tdy-q4-2020-earnings-cal/
https://investor.northropgrumman.com/static-files/6e6e117f-f656-4c68-ba7f-3dc53c2dd13a

1st Congress: Madison wins with 57.95 percent of the vote.
2nd Congress: Trumbull Jr. wins with 61.76 percent of the vote
This one has been released way earlier because the House elected its Speaker today, and so should we.
Now,
Nancy Patricia Pelosi
Pelosi is a Democrat who represents California's 12th Congressional district, which spans most of the City and County of San Francisco, in the House.
Pelosi has previously served as the House Speaker from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2021.
Her political positions:

• Pelosi was a founding member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
  
• The American Civil Liberties Union’s Congressional Scorecard has given Pelosi a lifetime rating of 92% for her voting record on civil liberties.
  
• In 2001, she voted in favor of the USA Patriot Act, but voted against reauthorization of certain provisions in 2005.
  
• She voted against a Constitutional amendment banning flag-burning.
  
• Pelosi voted against the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
  
• Pelosi has long supported LGBT rights. In 1996, she voted against the Defense of Marriage Act. In 2004 and 2006, she voted against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would've amended the US Constitution to define marriage federally as being between one man and one woman.
  
• The LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign gave Pelosi a 100% rating in 2006 for her voting record in the 107th through 109th congresses (2001–2006), indicating that she voted favorably on legislation supported by the organization on every occasion.
  
• Pelosi supports the Equality Act, a bill that would expand the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
  
• Pelosi also opposes Trump's transgender military ban.
  
• Pelosi supports reform in marijuana laws, she also supports use of medical marijuana.
  
• Pelosi supports the Bush/Obama NSA surveillance program PRISM.
  
• Pelosi voted against the 1995 Balanced Budget Proposed Constitutional Amendment
  
• She also spearheaded the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 as part of the 100-Hour Plan. The Act raises the minimum wage in the United States and the territories of the Northern Marianas Islands and American Samoa.
  
• Pelosi opposed the welfare reform proposed by President Bush as well as reforms proposed and passed under President Clinton. She also opposed the tax reform signed by President Trump in December 2017.
  
• In 1999, Pelosi voted against displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings, including schools. Pelosi voted for the No Child Left Behind Act, which instituted testing to track students' progress and authorized an increase in overall education spending.
  
• Pelosi has supported the development of new technologies to reduce U.S. dependence upon foreign oil and remediate the adverse environmental effects of burning fossil fuels.
  
• Pelosi has blocked efforts to revive offshore oil drilling in protected areas.
  
• Pelosi was instrumental in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
  
• She does not endorse Senator Bernie Sanders' bill for single-payer healthcare.
  
• Pelosi voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and earlier attempts at similar bans.
  
• She has voted in favor of lifting the ban on privately funded abortions at overseas U.S. military facilities.
  
• Pelosi stands in favor of increased background checks for potential gun owners, as well as the banning of assault weapons.
  
• Pelosi opposes reinstating the military draft.
  

Pelosi's foreign policy

• In 2008, after a meeting with the Dalai Lama and officials in the Tibetan government-in-exile, Pelosi criticized the People's Republic of China for its handling of the unrest in Tibet; addressing a crowd of thousands of Tibetans in Dharamsala, India, Pelosi called on "freedom-loving people" worldwide to denounce China for its human rights abuses in Tibet.
  
• Pelosi criticized the imprisonment of Hong Kong democracy activists in August 2017.
  
• Before the Trump administration took concrete measures against China in late March 2018, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders pressed Trump to focus more on China and impose real punishments, such as fulfill his own campaign commitments to label China a currency manipulator and stop China from pressuring U.S. tech companies into giving up intellectual property rights.
  
• In September 2019, Pelosi met with Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong on Capitol Hill.
  
• Pelosi publicly scolded Colombian president Álvaro Uribe during Uribe's May 2007 state visit to America.
  
• Pelosi supports normalization of relations with Cuba.
  
• Pelosi opposed U.S. intervention in the 1991 Gulf War.
  
• In 2016, Pelosi opposed two bills that if enacted would block Iran's access to the dollar and impose sanctions for its ballistic missile program.
  
• She supports the Iran nuclear deal.
  
• In 2002, Pelosi opposed the Iraq Resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq.
  
• Pelosi's voting record shows consistent support for Israel.
  
• Pelosi supported Israel in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
  
• Nancy Pelosi is one of the few members of Congress to have traveled to North Korea. She has expressed concern about the danger of nuclear proliferation from the North Korean regime, and the ongoing problems of hunger and oppression imposed by that country's leadership.
  
• Pelosi has generally taken a hard stance against Putin and Russia.
  
• Pelosi supports the Syria Accountability Act and Iran Freedom and Support Act.
  
• Pelosi supported the NATO-led military intervention in Libya in 2011. She also favored arming Syria's rebel fighters.
  
• In mid-October 2007, after the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution to label the 1915 killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, Pelosi pledged to bring the measure to a vote. (The resolution was actually passed during her second term as Speaker in 2019.)
  

Kevin Owen McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy is a Republican who represents California's 23rd Congressional district which includes parts of the southern San Joaquin Valley, the Tehachapi Mountains and southern Sierra Nevada, and the northwestern Mojave Desert. It comprises most of Kern County and portions of Los Angeles and Tulare counties. Cities in the district include Porterville, Ridgecrest, most of Bakersfield, and part of Lancaster.
He previously served as House Majority Whip from January 3, 2011 to August 1, 2014 and House Majority Leader from August 1, 2014 to January 3, 2019.
His political positions:

• McCarthy is a supporter of the Hyde Amendment, and in 2011 co-sponsored a bill, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" (NTFAA), to make the Hyde Amendment permanent.
  
• McCarthy received a 100% rating from the National Right to Life Committee, and a 0% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.
  
• On September 17, 2020, McCarthy voted against House Resolution 908 to condemn racism against Asian-Americans related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
  
• McCarthy was an early supporter of Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.
  
• In October 2019, McCarthy said "there's nothing that the president did wrong" in regards to President Trump requesting that the Ukrainian President start an investigation into 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
  
• McCarthy has been frequently at odds with environmental groups; the League of Conservation Voters has given him a lifetime score of 3%.
  
• McCarthy does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change, that is to say, he's a climate change denier.
  
• In 2011, McCarthy was the primary author of the "Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act" (H.R. 1581), legislation that would strip 60 million acres of public lands of protected status.
  
• McCarthy received campaign donations from Saudi Arabia's lobbyists.
  
• McCarthy voiced support for Hong Kong protesters.
  
• McCarthy supported killing Soleimani.
  
• McCarthy said he supported Israel's planned annexation of the West Bank.
  
• As House majority leader, McCarthy led efforts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare).
  
• McCarthy opposed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which added perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disabilities as protected classes under existing federal hate crimes law. He has voted against the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007.
  
• Throughout 2018, McCarthy opposed efforts to codify the legal status of DREAMers after Trump suspended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which provided temporary stay for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors.
  
• McCarthy supports the ICE and co-authored a resolution in support of it in 2018.
  
• McCarthy was a supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barred federal recognition of same-sex marriage and banned same-sex couples from receiving federal spousal benefits.
  
• McCarthy has a "D-" rating from National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws regarding his voting record on cannabis-related matters.
  
• In August 2018, McCarthy co-signed a letter spearheaded by John Garamendi, Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, calling for Trump to "send more federal aid to fight" the wildfires across the state of California.
  
• McCarthy introduced the FORWARD Act in 2018, which "would provide $95 million in research funding for valley fever and other fungal diseases". The bill provides $5 million for a "blockchain pilot program", facilitating sharing data between doctors and scientists researching such diseases. It would also fund $8 million in matching grant money to be awarded every year for five years to local groups applying for research grants, as well as $10 million each year for five years to CARB-X, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services public-private partnership.
  
• On October 23, 2018, McCarthy tweeted that George Soros, Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg, were trying to “buy” the upcoming midterm election.
  
• McCarthy claims that social media platforms, such as Twitter, are actively censoring conservative politicians and their supporters.
  

VOTE HERE!

Photo of Pelosi marching for LGBTQ+ rights in 1987, during the Reagan Administration
NO PROTEST VOTES!

No. You don't frighten me, Mollari. If you try to go up against our forces, you'll lose.
Yes, your ships are very impressive in the air, or in space--but at this moment, they are on the ground.
Right--they're on the ground. But they can sense an approaching ship from miles away. So what are you going to do, Mollari, blow up the island?
Actually--now that you mention it--[pulls detonator from pocket]
No!
[presses detonator]
Babylon 5, explaining the vulnerability of aircraft to ground attack in typical hammy fashion
Hello, and welcome to another episode of "AmericanNewt8 explains the global military situation at present in a convenient, possibly easy-to-read guide". Maybe I should make a YouTube channel or something. All the cool kids [and a lot of idiots who know nothing about military equipment] are doing it. Anyway, today we have the US Air [and, for the moment, Space Force--they haven't fully separated yet], and, surprisingly for once, a somewhat more positive message. I'm sorry this one took so long; I've been busy for the past month or so, but I figured I should get this one out I already had 80% done before talking about Turkey and the war in the Caucuses, which are likely to be shorter, more current, and arrive sometime in the next week if all goes as planned.
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Current Effortposts In My Series:

1. What you [might] need to know about South Korea's ludicrous arms buildup
2. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches.... uh, what do we do after that again?: The Perilous Defensive Position of Taiwan
3. "You've hit another cargo ship? The Problems with the US Navy: Not all of them begin with "Seven" and end with "th Fleet"."
4. Will China's PLAN survive contact with the enemy?
5. Biden's New START and modern nuclear war
6. Boned: Problems (but not too many) in the US Air [and Space!] Force
7. Erdogan Sallies Forth [inserted largely on account of the recent breakout of a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan]
8. Begun, the Drone Wars Have: Why You Should Pay Attention To This "Tiny" War
9. First And Last Stand Of The Tin Can Navies [ASEAN + Australia and the smaller adversaries China may contend with]
10. --Unnamed-- effortpost on Japanese military matters, mostly about how weird the JSDF status is
11. --Unnamed--effortpost on Indian military matters, and why they can't focus on China or buy anything that works
12. --Unnamed--effortpost on the rest of the PLA, mostly the air force though
13. --Unnamed--effortpost on the rest of the US Armed Forces, mostly talking about how the marines are changing and the Army's new love affair with INF-busting weapons
14. Conclusion?

1. Our Pride And Joy

America's Navy may be its key instrument of power projection abroad and in some ways the most important service branch, but the one that is by far the greatest beneficiary of American skill, the apex of our capabilities, is without a doubt the US Space Force. From Day 1 the US has had a commanding lead in the field. Mind you, that's not saying that nobody's ever challenged or exceeded the US in limited areas for limited periods of time--the early 1950s were about the last time that happened though [aside for commercial launch vehicles from around 1980-2010]. In the modern era, it is very rare that buying something other than an American-made aircraft or rocket makes any sort of economic or strategic sense [political is of course a different matter entirely]. The US Air Force has generally benefited from high, consistent levels of investment and has had relatively light burdens placed on it operationally [though in recent years post 9/11 this has changed to an extent], and it has developed into one of the best-trained and most doctrinally sophisticated forces in the world. More on that later. Anyway, the Air Force is probably the best-loved branch politically [Marines might be more respected but they get budgetary scraps], at least of the military as a whole, and it ends up with more funding, smarter people, and a much better QOL as a result. In fact Air Force personnel are usually treated to quite a bit of envy and ribbing about how much better their conditions are than their Army, Marine, or Navy counterparts.
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2. Aging Equipment [again!]

Guess what? The same problem that seems to afflict most of the US military [and, for that matter, most European, Latin American, and non-East Asian militaries] is aging equipment from the Cold War finally wearing out. In the Air Force, this takes a number of different forms. Often, it's a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but even then airframes do wear out eventually and need replacement and a lot of them are getting to that point.
Logistics, Support, That Kind of Thing
One of the least glamorous parts of the Air Force, logistical and support capabilities are rapidly aging. The primary airframe the Air Force uses for these is the.. wait for it... Dash 80, as the C-135 whose commercial variant is better known as the Boeing 707. It was a very impressive aircraft, but it was designed in the 1950s. Even though we've reengined the C-135 with more modern engines, and done some serious overhauls, they're getting pretty long in the tooth. Most notably we have the 398 KC-135 Stratotankers which make up the bulk of the US midair refueling fleet, which are joined by 31 E-3 Sentry AWACs, a number of specialized RC-135 derivatives doing everything from SIGINT to hunting for nuclear weapons and 17 E-8 Joint STARS. While these were produced up until the early 1990s, the airframes are aging and they need replacements, and the sheer quantity of aircraft is likely to cause trouble. There are also other aircraft that have to be replaced in the mid-term [by the early 2040s] like the C-5 Galaxy and the KC-10 Extender, but these are somewhat less of an immediate concern. There are some C-130 Hercules replacements also needed but those are largely being done with newer versions of the same aircraft.
Bombers
The B-1 Lancer is first on the chopping block, due to high maintenance costs and time [it generally takes 120 hours of maintenance for an hour of flight time]. That represents 60 bombers, on paper anyway, and a good chunk of the USAF's supersonic strike capability. However, cutting it should free up resources for new hardware, and in fact new USAF budget proposals suggest rapidly retiring the B-1. The B-2 Spirit is also on the chopping block due to high price and high maintenance demands, but it can't really be replaced until the B-21 Raider shows up. There is also a need to find a replacement for the B-52, but nobody is really sure what that looks like and it's much less urgent--the B-52 will soldier on for the indefinite future and may well hit a full century in operational service. Even if one runs into the "airplane of Thesus" the fact that you could well have fourth or fifth generation B-52 pilots flying on 90-year-old aircraft is, to be honest, kind of neat.
Fighters
The F-15 and F-16 originally took flight in the 1970s and are still seeing interest today, though the modern F-15 and F-16 are very different beasts from their originals. However, the overall fleet is starting to age--primarily the F-15C fleet operated by the US Air National Guard which does air policing in the US. This is why the Guard is actually first in line for new F-15EX aircraft and has even received brand new F-35s [that, and the fact that the Air National Guard is actually pretty integrated with the Air Force]. F-16s are also starting to wear out; the USAF still operates over a thousand of the type. They are set to primarily be replaced with the F-35, though, with around 1500 aircraft on order. They will also replace the A-10 [along with drones, I suppose], and I'll take a moment to say that the A-10 is heavily overrated, there's a reason the USAF wants to dump it, and it's notorious for friendly fire incidents. Its job would be better done by drones or even aircraft like the Super Tucano.
Trainers
These are, guess what, also wearing out. The USAF currently operates over 500 T-38 Talon trainers, but it already has a replacement lined up for this aircraft which was first flown in 1959. It just adds to the list of things that need replacing.
ICBMs
Also should mention these, I suppose. The US is currently operating the Minuteman-III) as its sole ground-based nuclear deterrent/ICBM, and these 1970s-era missiles have survived their replacement, the LGM-118 Peacekeeper. They have to be replaced as well, and the USAF actually recently awarded a contract to do so to Northrop Grumman [though there are issues with that mentioned below].
Maintenance
One side-effect of all this is that the Air Force has increasingly high demands for maintenance which are simply not met, which combined with a shortage of maintainers [partially due to good outside pay but mostly because anecdotal reports suggest life as an Air Force maintainer is terrible] means that the Air Force has a poor readiness rate, especially because a lot of airframes aren't in good condition to begin with, having been worn out by decades of use.
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3. Procurement Woes... fixed?

So, the Air Force has had a pretty troubled history with procurement in recent years. By far the most infamous one is the F-35. Well, yes, the F-35 was a procurement disaster. Another Redditor has done a great service by writing up the account Ash Carter [Secretary of Defense under Obama] gave of the program. It's long [full version here] and probably doesn't give a full account as it is Carter's memoir--but I'll just pick out one of the most significant parts of it:

At one point of the meeting, after we'd made it abundantly clear that the grossly inflated price for the JSF jets was unacceptable, CEO Bob Stevens casually said to me, "Well, if you tell me how much money you have, I'll tell you how many planes you can buy."
I was taken aback. Rather than negotiating a fair price with us, Stevens was behaving as if his company were entitled to all the money the taxpayers could afford. And although he obviously had a per-plane price in mind, he didn't care to divulge it openly, nor would he agree to a fixed-price contract holding him to it. I found this cavalier attitude offensive. With deeper disrepute, the JSF program would go down the political drain, and we wouldn't be able to buy any of these needed aircraft.
With all this in mind, I let his question hang in the air unanswered for a moment. Then I replied, "How about none?" With that, I walked out of the room. "None" was a reasonable prediction in the political climate surrounding this out-of-control program.

However, the F-35 was a pretty uniquely messed up procurement program due to suffering from what I'd broadly call "jointness", where interservice procurement made things less efficient.
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The Air Force on its own has had some pretty impressive procurement messups though. Look no further than the KC-46 Pegasus, a tanker designed to replace the KC-135 [as mentioned above loads of these are getting retired in the next couple years]. The first sign of trouble probably should have been when the first program to replace the tankers with the KC-767 [now the KC-46] was cancelled on account of a bribery scandal involving the CFO of Boeing offering the procurement official an executive position. The second sign probably should have been the whole bit where, unlike its competitor, the A330 MRTT, the KC-767 didn't actually exist. And when the A330 won the contract bid, Boeing of course protested and, ultimately, got the contract evaluated again, with [at least per Northrop Grumman's claims, who was running a joint bid with Airbus] requirements rigged for the KC-767, and, finally, almost a decade after the program started, Boeing won the bid.
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Except there was the small problem that Boeing hadn't built the plane yet, which turned into a large one. Ultimately the program was marred by years of delays and major technical problems. It only recently finally began delivering aircraft to the Air Force, years late and over-budget [though the USAF did manage to claw quite a bit of it back from Boeing].
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However, there are some positive signs that future procurement will be better. Besides the F-35 being saved, there's the example of the T-X program, which is to replace the elderly T-38 Talon trainer. It invited foreign competition to the field, featured vigorous competition, and resulted in an actually effective aircraft--developed by both Boeing [of course] but also Saab--yes, the Swedes have a significant hand in the trainer jet likely to equip much of the world.
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In particular, something very interesting the US Air Force is doing is diving heavily into computer design and open systems architecture. What this means, in short, is that they'll design new planes with a heavy emphasis on doing detailed computer design and simulation, only finally building an aircraft to demonstrate it works IRL--which of course cuts costs substantially--and they'll try to build common hardware and software that will work in any number of aircraft. The overall idea is to make aircraft inexpensive, easy to design, and modular. The Air Force even has a buzzword for this already, the "Digital Century Series", referring to the last time the Air Force very rapidly built a whole bunch of aircraft on a relatively common hardware platform. Whether this will bear fruit remains yet to be seen.

4. Fighting the Peer Conflict

The USAF, for the past thirty years, has not faced a peer competitor. Arguably it didn't even face one before that--the Soviet Air Force was no match for what the USAF could field, as was demonstrated quite well in a number of conflicts. The good news is that the USAF has had a long time to build up a lead, and is still far ahead of China or Russia, further ahead than the Army or Navy is by a long shot--Americans like their planes and electronics. For an illustrative example, China'sJ-20 stealth fighter has been produced in a quantity of... 50; while the USAF has almost 200 F-22s and is ordering over a thousand F-35s. The Su-57 barely even flies and is nowhere near peer to what the United States can field despite whatever scary articles you might have read. The bad news is that only recently has the USAF actually begun preparing to fight a peer conflict, which will tax it in different ways.
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The main vulnerabilities the Air Force has in a peer conflict are more logistical and operational than regarding the quality of its aircraft or pilots, which are moreless unmatched. The first problem is that readiness isn't fantastic thanks to the War on Terror burning through all the ancient Cold War aircraft that the USAF has operated, and yes, aircraft do wear out. In fact, large numbers of F-15Cs operated by the US Air National Guard have been grounded due to age and fatigue. The shortage of maintainers also plays a role here. There's also the problem that the US Air Force is still quite vulnerable on the ground in any peer conflict; especially to precision strikes with ballistic and cruise missiles--the US Air Force has downsized considerably and now only has a handful of bases for both political and budgetary reasons, but that means that, when facing, for instance, China, the USAF must rely heavily on just six airfields--Osan, Kunsan, Misawa, Yokota, Kadena and Andersen [maybe bring that to 9 by adding USMC and Navy installations, which field fewer and less capable aircraft].
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Thus, the primary challenge that the USAF faces is a quiet one--ensuring that it can operate from dispersed locations, at high opstempo, and repair its facilities rapidly. This is really also the biggest question mark in terms of the USAF's performance, but there's some reason to be optimistic here--the USAF is aware of the threat and is actually working to solve it. However, ultimately only changes in the political environment [the addition of bases in the Philippines or Palau, or the development of readied airfields in Japan] will fix the basing problem. Better ballistic missile defense will probably also help here. Russia or China will probably have poor luck against the USAF in the air; seeking primarily to deny the USAF free reign and thus the ability to support ground offensives, but they could cause significant damage by hitting ground facilities, and everyone knows it.
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There's also the question of surface-to-air missiles; which have driven quite a bit of concern the past few years as China and Russia field increasingly capable systems like the S-400 and HQ-9. It is feared that the sophistication of these weapons could create "A2/AD bubbles" where the USAF and USN are unable to operate. While the access bubble does still look quite real for the Navy, recent developments have seriously called the efficacy of surface-to-air missiles into question--particularly the fact that the Israelis and Turks seem to be able to almost ignore them, or at least their shorter-range counterparts. The destruction of Armenian S-300 launchers by Azerbaijan with Turkish drones is certainly an ominous signal for anyone thinking advanced air defenses would keep them safe. How good the full-scale systems are against conventional targets is still unknown, but my guess is much less effective than the marketing--and keep in mind that despite years of concerns, SAMs have only been successful from about 1960-1980, and even then relatively minor adjustments in strategy seemed to significantly mitigate damage--so it's unclear how concerned we should actually be about such technology.
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There are also questions about whether or not the USAF is operating the right mix of aircraft for the job, and these are valid ones. The USAF is buying new F-15EX, which has literally been described as not survivable after 2028 [though there is a case for the plane as a carrier of standoff weapons or a homeland defense fighter], and still operates the A-10 [an aircraft now mostly known for a number of notorious blue-on-blue (friendly fire) incidents] which, if used in a modern environment where the USAF didn't have total air supremacy, would simply not be able to survive. Yes, there's a reason the USAF wants to scrap the A-10, and no, the GAU-8 is cool but it doesn't even kill columns of modern main battle tanks. Unless you're primarily planning on fighting North Korea, the A-10 is close to useless(ly dangerous). The B-1 has also been highlighted as obsolete, largely due to high maintenance costs. However, the USAF is working hard to scrap these aircraft as fast as politically feasible.

5. New Technologies

The Air Force has always had a certain inclination towards adopting the newest, shiniest technologies, and at the moment there are a number of interesting concepts that it is exploring. I'll talk about two of the most significant ones [especially combined] here.
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First, the Air Force is seeking to create future aircraft entirely virtually--using highly detailed computer models to design numerous types of specialist aircraft, and only building prototypes to test the results that simulations produce. Their latest trainer, the "eT-7", uses this methodology--the "e" is supposed to designate that it was designed this way. There's also a move towards using common avionics and software for a variety of different aircraft. Figures high up at the Pentagon have discussed a "Digital Century Series", modeled after a chain of fighters rapidly developed in the 1950s for a number of different roles, from the F-102 interceptor to the F-105 fighter-bomber. This could potentially create numerous new aircraft rapidly; a shift back towards the times before the 1990s where a single fighter project took the entire attention and budget of the Air Force. Nobody is really sure how this will pan out but it looks quite promising. In particular, the fact that the USAF was able to take its new prototype fighter jet into the skies a year after it was originally envisioned is stunning--and suggests that this potential return to the old days of the 1940s and 1950s when new aircraft showed up every year is not just a pipe dream.
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Second, the Air Force is investing in UCAVs [Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles], most notably in the Skyborg concept. The goal is to develop a low-cost drone that can both deliver additional weapons to target while being accompanied by a manned fighter--a sort of drone wingman, which is cheap enough to be expendable [thus serving a secondary purpose, soaking up enemy air to air missiles]. Numerous companies have been awarded contracts to develop UCAVs and this program is looking quite promising, so expect to hear more of it in the future.

6. Drones

Drones are a rather interesting topic and one that I'll most likely get into more detail in on my next two posts specifically regarding Turkey. The US was one of the pioneers of UAVs, with the other big player in the field being Israel--in fact the US has bought Israeli drones from time to time, though of course China and Russia have also established a presence, without even mentioning Turkey. The US has a number of drones for different purposes--largely for reconnaissance of different types and precision-strike capability. It has the RQ-4 Global Hawk, for reconnaissance, the MQ-9A Reaper, for strike missions, and the RQ-170, which.... well, probably something involving reconnaissance, it's half-CIA so who knows. However, the US may not have kept up on the ongoing drone revolution, which is actually something I can't really blame them for since the 'revolution' only started in January. Yes. Last January.
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This 'revolution' began on January 5, 2020, to be exact, and was led by an unlikely candidate: Turkey. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and this was certainly the case for the Turkish drone program. After the US refused to sell Turkey drones on account of the fact that they might be used against Kurds [use of Turkish drones suggests they definitely are used against Kurds], Turkey decided to make their own drone program with blackjack and hookers--or, well, just drones. Their DIY effort didn't really garner much attention until sent to Libya,but investment in their program skyrocketed, largely for two reasons. First, Turkey has been largely barred from major hardware acquisitions from the US and, to an increasing extent, Europe. Second, Erdogan deeply distrusts the Turkish Air Force and has dramatically cut pilot numbers through his multiple purges of the service. Third, Turkey is competing out of its class, against Russia, the UAE, and other major regional powers.
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Once it arrived in Libya, it suddenly became clear that the Turkish drone program was much more important than previously thought. In many ways it bore the primary responsibility for turning the war around from what looked to be almost certain defeat for the UN-recognized GNA into a state where whether or not Haftar could survive was in question. In particular, it came as a great shock to most how easily Turkey defeated the very systems that were designed to shoot down UAVs--the Russian Pantsir in particular, which has been destroyed in great quantities with few Turkish casualties to show for it--and with the sticker price for a Turkish drone less than half of the Pantsir systems they kill, it could well revolutionize warfare. Experiences in Syria, and now in Armenia, where Turkish drones have destroyed hundreds of main battle tanks and casually destroyed SAM systems from some distance above, continue to bring into question just how vast the drone revolution is going to be. I'll cover this in more explicit detail in my next two posts.
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However, the USAF is watching and learning--its main difficulty with drones is more political than anything. Drones are often considered less important than manned aircraft by a leadership that largely flew manned aircraft [particularly fighters at that], and it is the bottom tier of officer recruits that fly drones [though, interestingly, some drones are actually flown by enlisted pilots] and even then there's usually a shortage of RPA pilots--that's why a few are flown by enlisted in the first place. Whether or not they'll take these lessons to heart, only time will tell, but the history of the Air Force leaves me relatively optimistic on the matter--more than many other services, it's willing to embrace change.

7. Nukes

The US Air Force runs two legs of the nuclear triad--the air and ground portions. The first is dominated by, believe it or not, gravity bombs--mostly the B61. This weapon has been sitting around in the United States [and Europe under nuclear sharing, in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Turkey] for a while now, the first variants being made in 1968, and has recently been updated to the latest B61-12 variant, which offers high precision [as precise as JDAMs, not that it's likely to matter in most situations where nukes are being dropped] and flexibility--the bomb can be deployed from low altitudes at high speeds, and from within the internal weapons bay of the F-22 and F-35 [not to mention the B-2 and future B-21], so it's not as dumb as it might sound. Air-launched weapons also have useful features like the ability to recall them once launched, which isn't an option for missiles, along with fitting into doctrine for a tactical nuclear war. While I could go on about the lack of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles [which hopefully will be fixed by the end of the Intermediate Forces Treaty] it's not a big deal.
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The main concern here [and perhaps a suggestion that procurement is still messed up] is the ground-based deterrent, which currently consists of a few hundred Minuteman III missiles buried in the northern central United States. These missiles, like much of the Air Force, date to the 1970s and have outlasted their supposed replacement--the MX Peacekeeper. These missiles are finally approaching end of life and are to be replaced by a new ICBM system. This process is... problematic. First off, it was a sole-source bid because Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK Systems, the primary American producer of solid-fuelled rockets and missiles, and this resulted in Boeing pulling out of the competition. Second, the cost seems rather high, at least in my view, with lifetime cost estimates of as much as $90 billion, with development alone amounting to $13 billion at sticker price. It positions the cost of rebuilding the ground-based deterrent as comparable to the US Navy's program to replace the Ohio-class submarines with the Columbias. The ground-based deterrent has also lost substantial importance as sea-launched and air-launched weapons have become much more accurate and capable of fulfilling the ground-based counterforce mission [which arguably died with Peacekeeper], and it remains the most vulnerable portion of the triad. What good it does is largely as another independent nuclear deterrent and one that soaks up enemy warheads in the event of nuclear war that could be directed towards other targets. A disastrous procurement here could cause problems for the Air Force you will see in the future. My suggestion would be either to continue modernizing the Minuteman IIIs or aim to replace them with the cheapest option possible--something like, for instance, a land-based Trident missile [as if the Air Force would ever allow such a thing to be built]. All the ground-based deterrent needs to do is be there, be a credible threat, and soak up enemy fire. That's it.

8. Space Force

The Space Force is now its own service branch, but as it really hasn't emerged yet I'll cover it here. In fact, just recently, the Space Force enlisted its first trainees. This is somewhat less in my area of expertise; but at the moment things look fairly promising. While the Space Force sounds silly it's almost certainly the part of the military you interact with the most in your daily life on account of running the GPS network. They also operate a variety of communications satellites and the system for monitoring ballistic missile launches, among other pieces of hardware. Expect to hear more about these guys in the future, as space becomes a potential battlefield--we've seen the deployment of a space-based anti-satellite weapon by the Russians just recently, and numerous powers now field anti-satellite missiles along with jamming equipment that can blind reconnaissance satellites, so space is becoming much more militarily important. I don't have much more to say about these guys at the moment, though, other than noting that they're already talking about being even "less physical" than the Air Force--translation: Less mandatory exercise--and they're teaching classes about space law, which is neat I guess. The main downside of the Space Force is that it's going to be very small, around 20-30,000 people, which is half what even the Coast Guard fields, and that could lead to problems with maintaining personnel and inefficiencies with redundant missions, procurement, and the like.

9. Conclusion

The USAF has problems; particularly with aging equipment and manpower, but it seems to realize that most of them exist and is moving to address them. Political constraints mean that the USAF is stuck supporting a variety of obsolete platforms and investing its large budget poorly in new ICBMs and poorly managed tankers, and procurement continues to be a struggle for the USAF, though nowhere near as bad as with the US Navy. Drones have the potential to revolutionize warfare and the USAF is working to develop capabilities in that area, albeit maybe not as fast as some other players in the field, and digital design promises more aircraft designed and produced faster--much, much faster. The USAF faces logistical challenges in a peer conflict, but nothing insurmountable--though the work there is likely to be painful and sidelined because it's less interesting than buying shiny new toys. The Space Force seems to be going along well though they could face some problems in the medium term from losing access to the USAF's resources--political, financial, and of personnel--until/unless they develop into a larger, more influential service. On the whole, though, the outlook for the USAF, at least, looks quite bright--a hope spot, along with the Army and Marines, that the serious problems of the Navy will not cripple the entire military capability of the United States.

10. Citations

Uh, I mostly embedded them in the post, and I don't want to go back and hunt for what I used after a month, but here are some good longer-form ones:
RAND, Chinese Attacks on Air Bases in Asia on the ballistic missile threat
Ryan Snyder, The Future of the ICBM Force: Should the Least Valuable Leg of the Triad Be Replaced?
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RAND, Creating a Separate Space Force mostly focusing on administrative difficulties and personnel issues
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RAND, Drone-Era Warfare Shows the Operatoinal Limits of Air Defense Systems on drones and the conflicts in Libya and Syria [yes, it's all RAND, no Brookings Institute or such this time round]. It also explains why air defense systems are perhaps much more vulnerable than commonly thought, which I didn't really get into here.
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Washington Post, Air Force seeks a radical shift in how jets, missiles, and satellites are designed with more detail on the shift to more computerized design the US Air Force wants to make
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CSIS, The Air Force Digital Century Series: Beyond the Buzzwords taking apart the "Digital Century Series" push

Ministry of Economy and Finance

The collapse of the Untied States has ushered in a new era for the Korean Republic. No longer constrained by the limitations and treaties imposed upon it by a superpower across the vastness of the Pacific, the Republic finds itself finally able to formulate its own independent policy and take charge in all matters that concern the homeland from security and defense to fiscal policy and international diplomacy. However, the loss of the United States as a primary ally and, with it, the various guarantees and obligations made by it for the defense of the Korean Republic south of the DMZ, has raised sharp concerns regarding the country's ability to sufficiently defend itself in case of an invasion from the north. To take control of the situation before it devolved into further anarchy, the Government took executive steps of establishing correspondence with the West Coast Collective which saw the temporary transfer-of-control of critical US equipment deployed in Korea, such as the THAAD interceptor battery, to the ROK Armed Forces while the WCC itself engaged in fisticuffs with the Salt Lake Republic over territory and legitimacy.
Fortunately, this collapse event was not as unexpected as it may appear on the surface and the truth of the matter is that many in Government had foreseen such an event as early as 2016 with the election of Donald Trump as the US President. Lawmaker Won Yoo-chul deliberated upon such an event back in 2019, suggesting that the US deploy nuclear weapons in Korea under joint command of US and Korean forces. Some even floated the possibility of the Republic acquiring its own nuclear deterrent. Indeed, the ROK Armed Forces maintain several delivery systems which could be reconfigured for nuclear warhead deployment. Although, to be honest, this is very pie-in-the-sky stuff as Korea remains committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and currently harbors no plans to develop its own nuclear weapons.
Right now, the challenges are of a more economic nature. As part of its commitments in Korea, the US had subsidized many components of the country's defense, subsidy that is now lost. To retain operational integrity and develop self-sufficiency among the ROK Armed Forces, it is prudent that the defense budget be re-examined, re-organized, and re-implemented to account for a Korean defense composition in a post-US hegemony "New World Order". The defense budget, currently sitting at about 3% since the executive action imposed back in 2021, will be increased dramatically over the next four years to about 3.7% or equivalent to about $65 billion in 2022 GDP numbers ($1.76 trn).
This increase in defense spending will be accomplished by raising existent taxes and establishing new ones. Volume-based taxes on beer, established in 2020, will be raised from the current 72 percent to 83 percent. Taxes on other liquors and alcoholic beverages will also be raised by 15 percent based on volume. Revenue from alcohol sales amounted to about 3.23 trillion South Korean won and are expected to rise to over 5 trillion this year, thus significantly contributing to the federal coffers. The possibiltiy of the legalization, regulation, and taxation of recreational marijuana is also being floated and is likely to be established this year thus bolstering government revenues. It is still expected that the increase in defense spending will incur increases in the annual deficit as well, albeit small due to these new revenue sources, which the country will simply have to bear with until the national security situation subsides.

In case you or your friends needed 200 reasons to not vote for Trump, here’s his terrible record:

• Worst jobs president in U.S history.
  
• 61.9 million Americans filed unemployment claims in the last 27 weeks.
  
• Oversaw a period of 20.5 million job losses.
  
• 11.3 million jobs lost since the start of the pandemic. Second source
  
• 4.7 million jobs lost since assuming office.
  
• Oversaw 14.7% U-3 unemployment rate.
  
• Oversaw 22.8% U-6 unemployment rate.
  
• 31.7% GDP contraction for Q2 2020, largest contraction on record.
  
• 5% GDP contraction for Q1 2020.
  
• 13% of small businesses have closed.
  
• Oversaw 23.7% of the workforce unemployed.
  
• Tripled black unemployment.
  
• Tripled Hispanic unemployment.
  
• Tripled Asian unemployment.
  
• Tripled women unemployment.
  
• Tripled white unemployment.
  
• Tripled youth unemployment.
  
• Consumer confidence is at a 6-year low.
  
• $26.8 trillion national debt.
  
• 274,000 manufacturing jobs have been outsourced.
  
• Oversaw the end of the longest economic expansion in history.
  
• U.S. suffered the world's biggest jump in economic misery.
  
• Oversaw the worst one-month jobs report in U.S. history.
  
• Cut enhanced unemployment benefits by 50% in the middle of a recession.
  
• Stock market saw its 8 largest single-day net drops in history.
  
• Failed to take appropriate action regarding business payrolls during the COVID-19 crisis which would have saved millions of jobs.
  
• Increased taxes on 10 million+ Americans.
  
• Projected $3.3+ trillion deficit for FY2020.
  
• Projected 5.6% GDP contraction for 2020 overall.
  
• Has added $6.6 trillion to the national debt in one-term.
  
• Is overseeing the highest unemployment rate in 80 years and since the Great Depression.
  
• 50% of Americans have seen a decline in their incomes in 2020.
  
• Signed a $2 trillion tax cut bill that gives 83% of benefits to the top 1% and large corporations.
  
• 43 million people face the risk of eviction.
  
• 15 million renters are behind on their rent.
  
• 30 million Americans have reported not having enough food.
  
• 14 times more children are going hungry today than last year.
  
• Adult hunger has tripled since last year.
  
• Oversaw the largest trade deficit in U.S history.
  
• Poverty levels are projected to rise above Great Recession levels.
  
• Put us on track for the largest debt to GDP ratio since WW2.
  
• 52% of young adults are having to live with their parents, the highest since the Great Depression.
  
• 20,000+ public lies since taking office.
  
• 3,400+ current conflicts of interest.
  
• 3,500+ lawsuits filed.
  
• Has filed 6 business bankruptcies.
  
• He paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
  
• He paid $0 in income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years.
  
• He’s currently $1.1 billion in debt.
  
• He has a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund he claimed.
  
• Is attempting to fill a Supreme Court vacancy weeks before a presidential election.
  
• Cut 700,000 poor people from food stamps.
  
• Committed 10’s of impeachable offenses.
  
• Impeached president.
  
• Attempted to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and disability programs in the last three fiscal year budgets.
  
• Wants to defund Social Security and Medicare of revenue if re-elected.
  
• Administration with the most criminal indictments in U.S history.
  
• Called African countries “shithole” countries.
  
• Mocked a disabled reporter.
  
• Called a group with Nazis “fine people”.
  
• Started a fake university to exploit students.
  
• World leaders are laughing about American leadership under Trump.
  
• Shifted kids-cancer charity money to his business.
  
• Has been sued for tax evasion.
  
• Siphoned money away from the 9/11 fund.
  
• 26 women have accused the president of sexual misconduct.
  
• Openly bragged about sexual assault “Grab ‘em by the pussy”.
  
• Paid off a pornstar he slept with while Melania was pregnant with Barron.
  
• Paid off a playboy model he slept with while married to Melania.
  
• Perved on underaged girls in the Miss Teen Universe pageants.
  
• Perved on his personal lawyer’s daughter.
  
• Has appointed the most billionaires to administrative positions in U.S history.
  
• Constantly undermines freedom of the press.
  
• Incites violence against journalists he doesn’t like.
  
• Has the highest turnover rate of any administration in history.
  
• Committed historic corruption by commuting the crimes of Roger Stone who was convicted by a jury of lying to shield him.
  
• Pardoned the campaign finance criminal Dinesh D’Souza
  
• All 3 of his campaign managers have faced criminal charges.
  
• Says John McCain was not a war hero because he was “captured”.
  
• Said not being applauded at the SOTU was equivalent to treason against the U.S.
  
• Took no action when informed about Russian bounties on U.S troops.
  
• Asked the Supreme Court to strike down the ACA during a pandemic.
  
• Retweeted a video of a man saying, “White power!”.
  
• Removed Saudi Arabia from the list of the worst human traffickers.
  
• Has threatened a 1-year sentence for flag burning.
  
• Hasn’t placed sanctions on China for Uighurs concentration camps.
  
• Is slowing USPS mail delivery before the election.
  
• Banned TikTok in the U.S.
  
• Shared political ads with Nazi symbols.
  
• Asked China for help with his re-election.
  
• Called deceased war heros “losers” and “suckers”.
  
• Hired a Postmaster General who’s already committed several crimes in office.
  
• Asked people in North Carolina to vote twice encouraging voter fraud.
  
• Suggested to “Get rid of the ballots” for mail-in votes when the election comes.
  
• Is resuming federal executions after a two-decade hiatus.
  
• Said the end result of Lincoln freeing the slaves was “Questionable”.
  
• Played on racist fears of terrorized suburbs to court white voters.
  
• Reversed transgender health protections.
  
• Made a personal donor with no experience head of the Post Office.
  
• Halted election security briefings.
  
• Defends Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions.
  
• Constantly incites violence against protestors.
  
• Continues to weaken protections for endangered species.
  
• Nominated Supreme Court justices who voted to allow religious employers to deny employees birth control.
  
• Is engaging in illegal money laundering in the 2020 election.
  
• Threatened to revoke schools’ tax-exempt status if they are considered “too liberal”.
  
• Suggested selling Puerto Rico as Hurricane Maria approached.
  
• Implemented a ban on transgender people from serving in the military.
  
• Attempted to cut HUD funding for affordable public housing.
  
• Carelessly held a large rally in the middle of pandemic that led to the death of a GOP presidential candidate.
  
• 53% of the country on average disapproves of Trump.
  
• Refers to women he doesn’t like as "fat pigs," "slobs," “dogs," and “nasty”.
  
• Had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
  
• Declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel just to please the evangelicals.
  
• Hypocritically hired undocumented workers at his businesses.
  
• Hypocritically outsourced manufacturing for many of his business products.
  
• Pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
  
• Floated the false and racist birther theory that Kamala Harris couldn’t serve as VP because her parents were immigrants.
  
• Constantly damages and discredits the CIA.
  
• Demanded loyalty from a former FBI director.
  
• Has a history of being anti-vaccine.
  
• Believes vaccines can cause autism in children.
  
• Says he plans to negotiate a third term which is unconstitutional.
  
• Won’t commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses.
  
• Constantly uses a racial epithet when mentioning Elizabeth Warren.
  
• Opposes universal healthcare.
  
• Compares officers who mistakenly use deadly force to golfers who miss putts.
  
• Used the White House for a political convention.
  
• Threatened to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funds from hospitals.
  
• Opposed emergency funds for the USPS.
  
• 5 military deferments.
  
• Said drug dealers should face the death penalty.
  
• Has engaged in union busting.
  
• Signed an executive order to create a fascist commission that promotes “patriotic education” in public schools.
  
• Has a history of making creepy incest jokes about Ivanka.
  
• Sold out and cozied up to Wall Street.
  
• Accused a senior who was severally injured by police of a “fake fall” and being in “Antifa”.
  
• Signed an executive order that hurt social media companies after having a tweet fact-checked.
  
• Claims to be a self-made billionaire when he actually inherited $413 million from his father.
  
• Caused the longest government shutdown in American history.
  
• Still has not released his tax returns.
  
• Saw his businesses rake in $1.9 billion in revenue and $470 million in profit while being in office.
  
• Assisted the Saudis in covering up Khashoggi’s murder.
  
• Denies climate change.
  
• Unwound 50 years of environmental regulation protections.
  
• Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord.
  
• Made a climate-denier head of the EPA.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Keystone XL pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Dakota Access pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• On track to drastically expand offshore oil drilling.
  
• Gutted NASA’s climate monitoring program.
  
• Loosened regulations on toxic air pollution.
  
• Dropped climate change from the list of national security threats.
  
• Increased annual military spending by $130 billion.
  
• Increased drone strikes by 432%.
  
• Abandoned the Kurds in Syria.
  
• Almost started a war with Iran.
  
• Withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal.
  
• Threatened North Korea with nukes
  
• Has dropped 10,000’s of bombs in the Middle East.
  
• Threatened to deploy 10,000 troops, use military action, “dominate”, and shoot BLM protestors.
  
• Had BLM protestors teargassed so he could pose for a bible photo-opt.
  
• Launched a fascist federal invasion into Portland, Oregon.
  
• Executively started a trade war with no strategy.
  
• Called for the 2020 election to be delayed for false reasons.
  
• Expanded the U.S-Mexico border wall.
  
• Reduced the number of refugees allowed in the U.S.
  
• Enacted measures to reduce the number of asylum seekers.
  
• Cut off government assistance to undocumented immigrants.
  
• Called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists”.
  
• Put restrictions on legal immigration.
  
• Has begun the removal of protections for Dreamers.
  
• Implemented a travel ban on 13 countries to “stop Muslims from entering the U.S.” Second source
  
• Keeping 70,000 migrant children in custody as well as cages.
  
• Gave more power to ICE.
  
• Separated deported immigrant children from their families.
  
• Suggested shooting immigrants who came across the southern border.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s out to gut public education.
  
• Picked an education secretary who increased protections for those accused of sexual assault.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s being investigated for violating ethics laws.
  
• Wants to end public service loan forgiveness.
  
• Vetoed a student loan forgiveness bill.
  
• Attempted to cut the Department of Education’s budget for the fourth consecutive year.
  
• Repealed Net Neutrality.
  
• 19 million more Americans are uninsured for healthcare.Second Source
  
• Deliberately raised ACA premiums for 7.3 million people.
  
• Implemented work rules to qualify for Medicaid.
  
• Defunded Planned Parenthood with the global Gag Rule.
  
• 7.3 million+ coronavirus cases.
  
• 209,00+ coronavirus deaths.
  
• Most coronavirus cases of any other country.
  
• Most coronavirus deaths of any other country.
  
• Encouraged his officials to “slow the testing down” for COVID-19.
  
• Wants to end federal funding for COVID-19 testing sites.
  
• Took 4 months to wear a mask publicly failing in leadership.
  
• Has failed to call for a temporary federal mask mandate.
  
• Deliberately downplayed the threat of COVID-19.
  
• Retweeted a conspiracy theory that only 9,000 were killed by COVID-19.
  
• Cut the CDC budget in both 2018 and 2019.
  
• Halted funding to the World Health Organization.
  
• Stripped the CDC of control of COVID-19 data.
  
• Is encouraging all schools to open back up during the middle of a pandemic.
  
• Encouraged people to drink chloroquine to fight the coronavirus.
  
• Encouraged people to inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus
  

[Edit]: I should have titled this "I support Trump" but whatever.
I know that this is TRUE unpopular opinion, but I can literally already feel the amount of hate I'm gonna get anyway despite this being a circle for unpopular takes.
For some reason, Trump has this reputation (especially around Reddit) as being some nasty racist sexist Nazi rapist (that's not a joke, I've met people who think all of this). Even those who don't live in America for some reason think this about Trump because the American media is full of shit. Of course he's not the perfect president or even the best republican but he is certainly better than Joe Biden.
-----------------
Trump is a good president. Here are a list of accomplishments from the Trump administration as of September 2018:

• Median household income has hit highest level ever recorded
• Almost 3.9 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps since the election. This is a 10 year low of Americans on EBT (food stamps).
• Signed the biggest package of tax cuts and reforms in history. After tax cuts, over $300 billion poured back into the U.S. in the first quarter alone.
• African-American unemployment has recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.
• Hispanic-American unemployment is at the lowest rate ever recorded.
• Asian-American unemployment recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.
• Women’s unemployment recently reached the lowest rate in 65 years.
• Youth unemployment has recently hit the lowest rate in nearly half a century.
• Lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for Americans without a high school diploma.
• New unemployment claims recently hit a 49-year low.
• Manufacturing jobs growing at the fastest rate in more than THREE DECADES.
• THE LIST GOES ON

Trump’s trying to break the deep state - you know, the pedophile ring? There’s been a high number of human trafficking arrests in Trump’s presidency. Much higher than Obama’s.
Joe Biden was kind of a segregationist back in the good ol days.
His son Hunter Biden married his brother’s widow, cheated on her with some hooker, and accidentally made a kid. Not exactly of vital importance but quite amusing.
Kamala Harris believed the sexual assault allegations on Joe Biden - yet Biden chose her to be his vice president.
Joe Biden’s NAFTA vote lost 850,000 jobs while Trump has brought millions of jobs into this country.
Here are some wise words from Joe Biden:
Joe Biden NEVER makes gaffes
You can’t go to Dunkin Donuts or 7/11 without having an Indian accent “and I’m not joking”
His plan will put 720 million women back in the workforce
120 million Americans are dead from Covid
150 million Americans have been killed by guns since 2007
Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids
If you don’t vote for Biden, you’re not really black
All men and women are created by the “go… you-know.. The thing”
He likes kids jumping on his lap
He holds truth over facts
Biden didn’t know black people (and the blacks there didn’t know white people)
Even the left knows how terrible of a candidate Joe Biden is. The new hashtag and modo is “Settle for Biden”. They are fully aware he’s terrible but they insist you should still choose him over Donald Trump anyway. Obama even said said “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up” and Obama appointed him as vice president.
Trump DID NOT put kids in cages. The immigrant kids put in cages were done under Obama’s administration. Trump actually signed an order to END this child separation.
immigrants from all over are bringing crime.
Build the wall:
An illegal alien in AZ is twice as likely to commit a crime than a legal citizen
20,000 women and children are trafficked across the southern border annually
90% of heroin comes from the southern border
Trump is using some military budget to pay for the wall. 3% of the military’s budget could end starvation.
I do not believe that people should be able to stay in the US illegally - taking advantage of our welfare systems.
The media is after Trump:

1. Here’s something called QAnon. It’s what they’ve titled Trump’s attack on the pedo ring. The New York Times and other sources report that Twitter is taking down people who spread QAnon. This isn’t even a harmful sentiment either. \Pretending** it was a conspiracy theory and not legitimate, and they took it down for “misinformation”. Why would they take it down but not the Flat Earth Society account? They also banned #SaveTheChildren on Facebook and apparently now on Twitter too. This is very odd considering the president himself even confirmed he actually IS trying to take down the pedophile ring.
2. Here’s CNN talking about Obama’s visit to Mount Rushmore; “That state’s primary is Tuesday. Obama arrived there late last night and got a good look around Mount Rushmore — it’s quite a sight if you haven’t seen it”, “Barack Obama is in South Dakota today. He arrived there last night. Take a look at this. He got a good glimpse of the majestic Mount Rushmore*”*. Here’s CNN talking about Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore: “President Trump will be at Mount Rushmore where he’ll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans*”*. So I wonder what changed about Rushmore.
3. Trump has done the OK hand sign and people tried to twist it around into a symbol for white supremacy. Here’s a news headline that says Trump and his quote “MASS KILLERS” are using the symbol for white supremacy. “Mass Killers” - that’s extreme. Here’s a dumb video saying it started as a joke on 4Chan. If you search “Obama ok hand”, you’ll find this article that says the symbol used to be good but now it’s not (because Trump uses it).
4. Trump set immigration restrictions on countries that Homeland Security deemed unsafe. Most of these countries were in the middle east and this was politically labelled the "Muslim ban" despite the fact that Muslim us a religion, not a race or a country. This stopped 82 terrorists. Here is a list of islamic terror attacks by the way.
5. Trump spent a good 14 minutes talking about a story where he was struggling to climb down a ramp. CNN covered this alluding to the amount of effort used to tell the story - calling him obsessed. Yet they did not give Joe Biden the same treatment when Biden told an incoherent story about how he worked at a pool.
6. Nick Sandman was a college student who showed up to a Trump rally on campus. He was wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat as a Native American stood before him playing drums. Nick was smirking awkwardly. CNN made Nick out to be the antagonist when all he did was stand before the Native man so he sued CNN for millions of dollars (and won).
7. Donald Trump’s brother Robert Trump recently passed away and the Washington Posts’ headline was “Robert Trump, younger brother of president Trump who filed lawsuit against niece, dies at age 71”. They could not set aside the politics of Mary Trump’s controversy. When the leader of ISIS died, the headline read “Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic state, dies at 48.” They treated the leader of ISIS better than the president’s brother. Absolutely pathetic.

As you can see, that’s just scratching the surface of how the media uses propaganda against Trump.
Trump is a tough president and a tough person. He threatened to end trade deals with China if they continued to use violence against Hong Kong protests. He promised to release tax returns if Hillary Clinton releases deleted emails - a bold statement.
Trump has formed a more stable relationship with North Korea.
Trump has signed a police reform.
Here is an article on things Trump has done to help the black community prosper
Here is a list of things Trump has done for the Latino/Hispanic community

In case you or your friends needed 214 reasons to not vote for Trump, here’s his terrible record:

• Worst jobs president in U.S history.
  
• 65.1 million Americans filed unemployment claims in the last 31 weeks.
  
• Oversaw a period of 20.5 million job losses.
  
• 10.6 million jobs lost since the start of the pandemic.Second source
  
• 4 million jobs lost since assuming office.
  
• Oversaw 14.7% U-3 unemployment rate.
  
• Oversaw 22.8% U-6 unemployment rate.
  
• 31.7% GDP contraction for Q2 2020, largest contraction on record.
  
• 5% GDP contraction for Q1 2020.
  
• 13% of small businesses have closed.
  
• Oversaw 23.7% of the workforce unemployed.
  
• Oversaw tripled black unemployment.
  
• Oversaw tripled Hispanic unemployment.
  
• Oversaw tripled Asian unemployment.
  
• Oversaw tripled women unemployment.
  
• Oversaw tripled white unemployment.
  
• Oversaw quadrupled youth unemployment.
  
• Consumer confidence is at a 6-year low.
  
• $27 trillion national debt.
  
• 274,000 manufacturing jobs have been outsourced.
  
• Oversaw the end of the longest economic expansion in history.
  
• U.S. suffered the world's biggest jump in economic misery.
  
• Oversaw the worst one-month jobs report in U.S. history.
  
• Cut enhanced unemployment benefits by 50% in the middle of a recession.
  
• Stock market saw its 8 largest single-day net drops in history.
  
• Failed to take appropriate action regarding business payrolls during the COVID-19 crisis which would have saved millions of jobs.
  
• Increased taxes on 10 million+ Americans.
  
• $3.1 trillion deficit for FY2020.
  
• Projected 5.6% GDP contraction for 2020 overall.
  
• Has added $6.6 trillion to the national debt in one-term.
  
• Is overseeing the highest unemployment rate in 80 years and since the Great Depression.
  
• 50% of Americans have seen a decline in their incomes in 2020.
  
• Signed a $2 trillion tax cut bill that gives 83% of benefits to the top 1% and large corporations.
  
• 43 million people face the risk of eviction.
  
• 15 million renters are behind on their rent.
  
• 30 million Americans have reported not having enough food.
  
• 14 times more children are going hungry today than last year.
  
• Adult hunger has tripled since last year.
  
• Oversaw the largest trade deficit in U.S history.
  
• Poverty levels are projected to rise above Great Recession levels.
  
• Put us on track for the largest debt to GDP ratio since WW2.
  
• 52% of young adults are having to live with their parents, the highest since the Great Depression.
  
• 22,000+ public lies since taking office.
  
• 3,500+ current conflicts of interest.
  
• 3,500+ lawsuits filed.
  
• Has filed 6 business bankruptcies.
  
• He paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
  
• He paid $0 in income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years.
  
• He’s currently $1.1 billion in debt.
  
• He has a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund he claimed.
  
• Is attempting to fill a Supreme Court vacancy weeks before a presidential election.
  
• Cut 700,000 poor people from food stamps.
  
• Committed 10’s of impeachable offenses.
  
• Impeached president.
  
• Attempted to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and disability programs in the last three fiscal year budgets.
  
• Wants to defund Social Security and Medicare of revenue if re-elected.
  
• Administration with the most criminal indictments in U.S history.
  
• Called African countries “shithole” countries.
  
• Mocked a disabled reporter.
  
• Called a group with Nazis “fine people”.
  
• Started a fake university to exploit students.
  
• World leaders are laughing about American leadership under Trump.
  
• Shifted kids-cancer charity money to his business.
  
• Has been sued for tax evasion.
  
• Siphoned money away from the 9/11 fund.
  
• 26 women have accused the president of sexual misconduct.
  
• Openly bragged about sexual assault “Grab ‘em by the pussy”.
  
• Paid off a pornstar he slept with while Melania was pregnant with Barron.
  
• Paid off a playboy model he slept with while married to Melania.
  
• Perved on underaged girls in the Miss Teen Universe pageants.
  
• Perved on his personal lawyer’s daughter.
  
• Has appointed the most billionaires to administrative positions in U.S history.
  
• Constantly undermines freedom of the press.
  
• Incites violence against journalists he doesn’t like.
  
• Has the highest turnover rate of any administration in history.
  
• Committed historic corruption by commuting the crimes of Roger Stone who was convicted by a jury of lying to shield him.
  
• Pardoned the campaign finance criminal Dinesh D’Souza
  
• All 3 of his campaign managers have faced criminal charges.
  
• Says John McCain was not a war hero because he was “captured”.
  
• Said not being applauded at the SOTU was equivalent to treason against the U.S.
  
• Took no action when informed about Russian bounties on U.S troops.
  
• Asked the Supreme Court to strike down the ACA during a pandemic.
  
• Retweeted a video of a man saying, “White power!”.
  
• Removed Saudi Arabia from the list of the worst human traffickers.
  
• Has threatened a 1-year sentence for flag burning.
  
• Hasn’t placed sanctions on China for Uighurs concentration camps.
  
• Is slowing USPS mail delivery before the election.
  
• Banned TikTok in the U.S.
  
• Refused to condem white supremacy at the first presidential debate.
  
• Shared political ads with Nazi symbols.
  
• Asked China for help with his re-election.
  
• Called deceased war heros “losers” and “suckers”.
  
• Hired a Postmaster General who’s already committed several crimes in office.
  
• Asked people in North Carolina to vote twice encouraging voter fraud.
  
• Suggested to “Get rid of the ballots” for mail-in votes when the election comes.
  
• Is resuming federal executions after a two-decade hiatus.
  
• Said the end result of Lincoln freeing the slaves was “Questionable”.
  
• Played on racist fears of terrorized suburbs to court white voters.
  
• Reversed transgender health protections.
  
• Made a personal donor with no experience head of the Post Office.
  
• Halted election security briefings.
  
• Defends Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions.
  
• Constantly incites violence against protestors.
  
• Continues to weaken protections for endangered species.
  
• Nominated Supreme Court justices who voted to allow religious employers to deny employees birth control.
  
• Is engaging in illegal money laundering in the 2020 election.
  
• Threatened to revoke schools’ tax-exempt status if they are considered “too liberal”.
  
• Suggested selling Puerto Rico as Hurricane Maria approached.
  
• Implemented a ban on transgender people from serving in the military.
  
• Attempted to cut HUD funding for affordable public housing.
  
• Carelessly held a large rally in the middle of pandemic that led to the death of a GOP presidential candidate.
  
• 54% of the country on average disapproves of Trump.
  
• Refers to women he doesn’t like as "fat pigs," "slobs," “dogs," and “nasty”.
  
• Had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
  
• Declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel just to please the evangelicals.
  
• Hypocritically hired undocumented workers at his businesses.
  
• Hypocritically outsourced manufacturing for many of his business products.
  
• Pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
  
• Floated the false and racist birther theory that Kamala Harris couldn’t serve as VP because her parents were immigrants.
  
• Constantly damages and discredits the CIA.
  
• Demanded loyalty from a former FBI director.
  
• Has a history of being anti-vaccine.
  
• Believes vaccines can cause autism in children.
  
• Says he plans to negotiate a third term which is unconstitutional.
  
• Won’t commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses.
  
• Constantly uses a racial epithet when mentioning Elizabeth Warren.
  
• 13 men attempted to kidnap the governor of Michigan after Trump tweeted out “Liberate Michigan!”
  
• Called on his Attorney General to arrest Biden, Clinton, and Obama on faulty charges.
  
• Was treated for COVID-19 with a treatment that was tested on cells from an abortion, something the president supposedly opposes.
  
• Chickened out of the second presidential debate.
  
• Said he would pause coronavirus stimulus until after the election.
  
• [Compared COVID-19 to the flu.](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-removes-trump-post-compared-covid-19-flu-n1242277?fbclid=IwAR0gfTbGZsxcQmNzg1eu4R6h9KEyABOzCYi-91DP9JLh28jzDGq3fO3pd1g
  
• Told U.S citizens not to fear getting COVID-19.
  
• Exposed secret service members to COVID-19 for a drive-by photo shoot.
  
• Opposes universal healthcare.
  
• Compares officers who mistakenly use deadly force to golfers who miss putts.
  
• Used the White House for a political convention.
  
• Threatened to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funds from hospitals.
  
• Opposed emergency funds for the USPS.
  
• 5 military deferments.
  
• Said drug dealers should face the death penalty.
  
• Has engaged in union busting.
  
• Signed an executive order to create a fascist commission that promotes “patriotic education” in public schools.
  
• Has a history of making creepy incest jokes about Ivanka.
  
• Sold out and cozied up to Wall Street.
  
• Accused a senior who was severally injured by police of a “fake fall” and being in “Antifa”.
  
• Signed an executive order that hurt social media companies after having a tweet fact-checked.
  
• Claims to be a self-made billionaire when he actually inherited $413 million from his father.
  
• Caused the longest government shutdown in American history.
  
• Still has not released his tax returns.
  
• Saw his businesses rake in $1.9 billion in revenue and $470 million in profit while being in office.
  
• Assisted the Saudis in covering up Khashoggi’s murder.
  
• Denies climate change.
  
• Unwound 50 years of environmental regulation protections.
  
• Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord.
  
• Made a climate-denier head of the EPA.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Keystone XL pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Dakota Access pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• On track to drastically expand offshore oil drilling.
  
• Gutted NASA’s climate monitoring program.
  
• Loosened regulations on toxic air pollution.
  
• Dropped climate change from the list of national security threats.
  
• Increased annual military spending by $130 billion.
  
• Increased drone strikes by 432%.
  
• Abandoned the Kurds in Syria.
  
• Almost started a war with Iran.
  
• Withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal.
  
• Threatened North Korea with nukes
  
• Has dropped 10,000’s of bombs in the Middle East.
  
• Threatened to deploy 10,000 troops, use military action, “dominate”, and shoot BLM protestors.
  
• Had BLM protestors teargassed so he could pose for a bible photo-opt.
  
• Launched a fascist federal invasion into Portland, Oregon.
  
• Executively started a trade war with no strategy.
  
• Called for the 2020 election to be delayed for false reasons.
  
• Expanded the U.S-Mexico border wall.
  
• Reduced the number of refugees allowed in the U.S.
  
• Enacted measures to reduce the number of asylum seekers.
  
• Cut off government assistance to undocumented immigrants.
  
• Called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists”.
  
• Put restrictions on legal immigration.
  
• Has begun the removal of protections for Dreamers.
  
• Implemented a travel ban on 13 countries to “stop Muslims from entering the U.S.” Second source
  
• Keeping 70,000 migrant children in custody as well as cages.
  
• Gave more power to ICE.
  
• Separated deported immigrant children from their families.
  
• Suggested shooting immigrants who came across the southern border.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s out to gut public education.
  
• Picked an education secretary who increased protections for those accused of sexual assault.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s being investigated for violating ethics laws.
  
• Wants to end public service loan forgiveness.
  
• Vetoed a student loan forgiveness bill.
  
• Attempted to cut the Department of Education’s budget for the fourth consecutive year.
  
• Repealed Net Neutrality.
  
• 19 million more Americans are uninsured for healthcare.Second Source
  
• Deliberately raised ACA premiums for 7.3 million people.
  
• Implemented work rules to qualify for Medicaid.
  
• Defunded Planned Parenthood with the global Gag Rule.
  
• 8.8 million+ coronavirus cases.
  
• 230,000+ coronavirus deaths.
  
• Most coronavirus cases of any other country.
  
• Most coronavirus deaths of any other country.
  
• Encouraged his officials to “slow the testing down” for COVID-19.
  
• Wants to end federal funding for COVID-19 testing sites.
  
• Took 4 months to wear a mask publicly failing in leadership.
  
• Has failed to call for a temporary federal mask mandate.
  
• Deliberately downplayed the threat of COVID-19.
  
• Retweeted a conspiracy theory that only 9,000 were killed by COVID-19.
  
• Cut the CDC budget in both 2018 and 2019.
  
• Halted funding to the World Health Organization.
  
• Stripped the CDC of control of COVID-19 data.
  
• Is encouraging all schools to open back up during the middle of a pandemic.
  
• Encouraged people to drink chloroquine to fight the coronavirus.
  
• Encouraged people to inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus
  

In case you or your friends needed 207 reasons to not vote for Trump, here’s his terrible record (FYI, this is from a progressive perspective):

• He’s contracted COVID-19 weeks before an election making him a very risky choice due to health concerns.
  
• Worst jobs president in U.S history.
  
• 62.8 million Americans filed unemployment claims in the last 28 weeks.
  
• Oversaw a period of 20.5 million job losses.
  
• 11.3 million jobs lost since the start of the pandemic. Second source
  
• 4.7 million jobs lost since assuming office.
  
• Oversaw 14.7% U-3 unemployment rate.
  
• Oversaw 22.8% U-6 unemployment rate.
  
• 31.7% GDP contraction for Q2 2020, largest contraction on record.
  
• 5% GDP contraction for Q1 2020.
  
• 13% of small businesses have closed.
  
• Oversaw 23.7% of the workforce unemployed.
  
• Tripled black unemployment.
  
• Tripled Hispanic unemployment.
  
• Tripled Asian unemployment.
  
• Tripled women unemployment.
  
• Tripled white unemployment.
  
• Tripled youth unemployment.
  
• Consumer confidence is at a 6-year low.
  
• $26.8 trillion national debt.
  
• 274,000 manufacturing jobs have been outsourced.
  
• Oversaw the end of the longest economic expansion in history.
  
• U.S. suffered the world's biggest jump in economic misery.
  
• Oversaw the worst one-month jobs report in U.S. history.
  
• Cut enhanced unemployment benefits by 50% in the middle of a recession.
  
• Stock market saw its 8 largest single-day net drops in history.
  
• Failed to take appropriate action regarding business payrolls during the COVID-19 crisis which would have saved millions of jobs.
  
• Increased taxes on 10 million+ Americans.
  
• Projected $3.3+ trillion deficit for FY2020.
  
• Projected 5.6% GDP contraction for 2020 overall.
  
• Has added $6.6 trillion to the national debt in one-term.
  
• Is overseeing the highest unemployment rate in 80 years and since the Great Depression.
  
• 50% of Americans have seen a decline in their incomes in 2020.
  
• Signed a $2 trillion tax cut bill that gives 83% of benefits to the top 1% and large corporations.
  
• 43 million people face the risk of eviction.
  
• 15 million renters are behind on their rent.
  
• 30 million Americans have reported not having enough food.
  
• 14 times more children are going hungry today than last year.
  
• Adult hunger has tripled since last year.
  
• Oversaw the largest trade deficit in U.S history.
  
• Poverty levels are projected to rise above Great Recession levels.
  
• Put us on track for the largest debt to GDP ratio since WW2.
  
• 52% of young adults are having to live with their parents, the highest since the Great Depression.
  
• 20,000+ public lies since taking office.
  
• 3,400+ current conflicts of interest.
  
• 3,500+ lawsuits filed.
  
• Has filed 6 business bankruptcies.
  
• He paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
  
• He paid $0 in income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years.
  
• He’s currently $1.1 billion in debt.
  
• He has a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund he claimed.
  
• Is attempting to fill a Supreme Court vacancy weeks before a presidential election.
  
• Cut 700,000 poor people from food stamps.
  
• Committed 10’s of impeachable offenses.
  
• Impeached president.
  
• Attempted to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and disability programs in the last three fiscal year budgets.
  
• Wants to defund Social Security and Medicare of revenue if re-elected.
  
• Administration with the most criminal indictments in U.S history.
  
• Called African countries “shithole” countries.
  
• Mocked a disabled reporter.
  
• Called a group with Nazis “fine people”.
  
• Started a fake university to exploit students.
  
• World leaders are laughing about American leadership under Trump.
  
• Shifted kids-cancer charity money to his business.
  
• Has been sued for tax evasion.
  
• Siphoned money away from the 9/11 fund.
  
• 26 women have accused the president of sexual misconduct.
  
• Openly bragged about sexual assault “Grab ‘em by the pussy”.
  
• Paid off a pornstar he slept with while Melania was pregnant with Barron.
  
• Paid off a playboy model he slept with while married to Melania.
  
• Perved on underaged girls in the Miss Teen Universe pageants.
  
• Perved on his personal lawyer’s daughter.
  
• Has appointed the most billionaires to administrative positions in U.S history.
  
• Constantly undermines freedom of the press.
  
• Incites violence against journalists he doesn’t like.
  
• Has the highest turnover rate of any administration in history.
  
• Committed historic corruption by commuting the crimes of Roger Stone who was convicted by a jury of lying to shield him.
  
• Pardoned the campaign finance criminal Dinesh D’Souza
  
• All 3 of his campaign managers have faced criminal charges.
  
• Says John McCain was not a war hero because he was “captured”.
  
• Said not being applauded at the SOTU was equivalent to treason against the U.S.
  
• Took no action when informed about Russian bounties on U.S troops.
  
• Asked the Supreme Court to strike down the ACA during a pandemic.
  
• Retweeted a video of a man saying, “White power!”.
  
• Removed Saudi Arabia from the list of the worst human traffickers.
  
• Has threatened a 1-year sentence for flag burning.
  
• Hasn’t placed sanctions on China for Uighurs concentration camps.
  
• Is slowing USPS mail delivery before the election.
  
• Banned TikTok in the U.S.
  
• Refused to condem white supremacy at the first presidential debate.
  
• Shared political ads with Nazi symbols.
  
• Asked China for help with his re-election.
  
• Called deceased war heros “losers” and “suckers”.
  
• Hired a Postmaster General who’s already committed several crimes in office.
  
• Asked people in North Carolina to vote twice encouraging voter fraud.
  
• Suggested to “Get rid of the ballots” for mail-in votes when the election comes.
  
• Is resuming federal executions after a two-decade hiatus.
  
• Said the end result of Lincoln freeing the slaves was “Questionable”.
  
• Played on racist fears of terrorized suburbs to court white voters.
  
• Reversed transgender health protections.
  
• Made a personal donor with no experience head of the Post Office.
  
• Halted election security briefings.
  
• Defends Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions.
  
• Constantly incites violence against protestors.
  
• Continues to weaken protections for endangered species.
  
• Nominated Supreme Court justices who voted to allow religious employers to deny employees birth control.
  
• Is engaging in illegal money laundering in the 2020 election.
  
• Threatened to revoke schools’ tax-exempt status if they are considered “too liberal”.
  
• Suggested selling Puerto Rico as Hurricane Maria approached.
  
• Implemented a ban on transgender people from serving in the military.
  
• Attempted to cut HUD funding for affordable public housing.
  
• Carelessly held a large rally in the middle of pandemic that led to the death of a GOP presidential candidate.
  
• 53% of the country on average disapproves of Trump.
  
• Refers to women he doesn’t like as "fat pigs," "slobs," “dogs," and “nasty”.
  
• Had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
  
• Declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel just to please the evangelicals.
  
• Hypocritically hired undocumented workers at his businesses.
  
• Hypocritically outsourced manufacturing for many of his business products.
  
• Pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
  
• Floated the false and racist birther theory that Kamala Harris couldn’t serve as VP because her parents were immigrants.
  
• Constantly damages and discredits the CIA.
  
• Demanded loyalty from a former FBI director.
  
• Has a history of being anti-vaccine.
  
• Believes vaccines can cause autism in children.
  
• Says he plans to negotiate a third term which is unconstitutional.
  
• Won’t commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses.
  
• Constantly uses a racial epithet when mentioning Elizabeth Warren.
  
• Opposes universal healthcare.
  
• Compares officers who mistakenly use deadly force to golfers who miss putts.
  
• Used the White House for a political convention.
  
• Threatened to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funds from hospitals.
  
• Opposed emergency funds for the USPS.
  
• 5 military deferments.
  
• Said drug dealers should face the death penalty.
  
• Has engaged in union busting.
  
• Signed an executive order to create a fascist commission that promotes “patriotic education” in public schools.
  
• Has a history of making creepy incest jokes about Ivanka.
  
• Sold out and cozied up to Wall Street.
  
• Accused a senior who was severally injured by police of a “fake fall” and being in “Antifa”.
  
• Signed an executive order that hurt social media companies after having a tweet fact-checked.
  
• Claims to be a self-made billionaire when he actually inherited $413 million from his father.
  
• Caused the longest government shutdown in American history.
  
• Still has not released his tax returns.
  
• Saw his businesses rake in $1.9 billion in revenue and $470 million in profit while being in office.
  
• Assisted the Saudis in covering up Khashoggi’s murder.
  
• Denies climate change.
  
• Unwound 50 years of environmental regulation protections.
  
• Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord.
  
• Made a climate-denier head of the EPA.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Keystone XL pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Dakota Access pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• On track to drastically expand offshore oil drilling.
  
• Gutted NASA’s climate monitoring program.
  
• Loosened regulations on toxic air pollution.
  
• Dropped climate change from the list of national security threats.
  
• Increased annual military spending by $130 billion.
  
• Increased drone strikes by 432%.
  
• Abandoned the Kurds in Syria.
  
• Almost started a war with Iran.
  
• Withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal.
  
• Threatened North Korea with nukes
  
• Has dropped 10,000’s of bombs in the Middle East.
  
• Threatened to deploy 10,000 troops, use military action, “dominate”, and shoot BLM protestors.
  
• Had BLM protestors teargassed so he could pose for a bible photo-opt.
  
• Launched a fascist federal invasion into Portland, Oregon.
  
• Executively started a trade war with no strategy.
  
• Called for the 2020 election to be delayed for false reasons.
  
• Expanded the U.S-Mexico border wall.
  
• Reduced the number of refugees allowed in the U.S.
  
• Enacted measures to reduce the number of asylum seekers.
  
• Cut off government assistance to undocumented immigrants.
  
• Called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists”.
  
• Put restrictions on legal immigration.
  
• Has begun the removal of protections for Dreamers.
  
• Implemented a travel ban on 13 countries to “stop Muslims from entering the U.S.” Second source
  
• Keeping 70,000 migrant children in custody as well as cages.
  
• Gave more power to ICE.
  
• Separated deported immigrant children from their families.
  
• Suggested shooting immigrants who came across the southern border.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s out to gut public education.
  
• Picked an education secretary who increased protections for those accused of sexual assault.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s being investigated for violating ethics laws.
  
• Wants to end public service loan forgiveness.
  
• Vetoed a student loan forgiveness bill.
  
• Attempted to cut the Department of Education’s budget for the fourth consecutive year.
  
• Repealed Net Neutrality.
  
• 19 million more Americans are uninsured for healthcare.Second Source
  
• Deliberately raised ACA premiums for 7.3 million people.
  
• Implemented work rules to qualify for Medicaid.
  
• Defunded Planned Parenthood with the global Gag Rule.
  
• 7.5 million+ coronavirus cases.
  
• 213,000+ coronavirus deaths.
  
• Most coronavirus cases of any other country.
  
• Most coronavirus deaths of any other country.
  
• Encouraged his officials to “slow the testing down” for COVID-19.
  
• Wants to end federal funding for COVID-19 testing sites.
  
• Took 4 months to wear a mask publicly failing in leadership.
  
• Has failed to call for a temporary federal mask mandate.
  
• Deliberately downplayed the threat of COVID-19.
  
• Retweeted a conspiracy theory that only 9,000 were killed by COVID-19.
  
• Cut the CDC budget in both 2018 and 2019.
  
• Halted funding to the World Health Organization.
  
• Stripped the CDC of control of COVID-19 data.
  
• Is encouraging all schools to open back up during the middle of a pandemic.
  
• Encouraged people to drink chloroquine to fight the coronavirus.
  
• Encouraged people to inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus
  

In case your friends needed 155 (200 now) reasons to not vote for Trump, here’s his terrible record:

• Worst jobs president in U.S history.
  
• 61.9 million Americans filed unemployment claims in the last 27 weeks.
  
• Oversaw a period of 20.5 million job losses.
  
• 11.3 million jobs lost since the start of the pandemic. Second source
  
• 4.7 million jobs lost since assuming office.
  
• Oversaw 14.7% U-3 unemployment rate.
  
• Oversaw 22.8% U-6 unemployment rate.
  
• 31.7% GDP contraction for Q2 2020, largest contraction on record.
  
• 5% GDP contraction for Q1 2020.
  
• 13% of small businesses have closed.
  
• Oversaw 23.7% of the workforce unemployed.
  
• Tripled black unemployment.
  
• Tripled Hispanic unemployment.
  
• Tripled Asian unemployment.
  
• Tripled women unemployment.
  
• Tripled white unemployment.
  
• Tripled youth unemployment.
  
• Consumer confidence is at a 6-year low.
  
• $26.7 trillion national debt.
  
• 274,000 manufacturing jobs have been outsourced.
  
• Oversaw the end of the longest economic expansion in history.
  
• U.S. suffered the world's biggest jump in economic misery.
  
• Oversaw the worst one-month jobs report in U.S. history.
  
• Cut enhanced unemployment benefits by 50% in the middle of a recession.
  
• Stock market saw its 8 largest single-day net drops in history.
  
• Failed to take appropriate action regarding business payrolls during the COVID-19 crisis which would have saved millions of jobs.
  
• Increased taxes on 10 million+ Americans.
  
• Projected $3.3+ trillion deficit for FY2020.
  
• Projected 5.6% GDP contraction for 2020 overall.
  
• Has added $6.6 trillion to the national debt in one-term.
  
• Is overseeing the highest unemployment rate in 80 years and since the Great Depression.
  
• 50% of Americans have seen a decline in their incomes in 2020.
  
• Signed a $2 trillion tax cut bill that gives 83% of benefits to the top 1% and large corporations.
  
• 43 million people face the risk of eviction.
  
• 15 million renters are behind on their rent.
  
• 30 million Americans have reported not having enough food.
  
• 14 times more children are going hungry today than last year.
  
• Adult hunger has tripled since last year.
  
• Oversaw the largest trade deficit in U.S history.
  
• Poverty levels are projected to rise above Great Recession levels.
  
• Put us on track for the largest debt to GDP ratio since WW2.
  
• 52% of young adults are having to live with their parents, the highest since the Great Depression.
  
• 20,000+ public lies since taking office.
  
• 3,400+ current conflicts of interest.
  
• 3,500+ lawsuits filed.
  
• Has filed 6 business bankruptcies.
  
• Is attempting to fill a Supreme Court vacancy weeks before a presidential election.
  
• Cut 700,000 poor people from food stamps.
  
• Committed 10’s of impeachable offenses.
  
• Impeached president.
  
• Attempted to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and disability programs in the last three fiscal year budgets.
  
• Wants to defund Social Security and Medicare of revenue if re-elected.
  
• Administration with the most criminal indictments in U.S history.
  
• Called African countries “shithole” countries.
  
• Mocked a disabled reporter.
  
• Called a group with Nazis “fine people”.
  
• Started a fake university to exploit students.
  
• World leaders are laughing about American leadership under Trump.
  
• Shifted kids-cancer charity money to his business.
  
• Has been sued for tax evasion.
  
• Siphoned money away from the 9/11 fund.
  
• 25 women have accused the president of sexual misconduct.
  
• Openly bragged about sexual assault “Grab ‘em by the pussy”.
  
• Paid off a pornstar he slept with while Melania was pregnant with Barron.
  
• Paid off a playboy model he slept with while married to Melania.
  
• Perved on underaged girls in the Miss Teen Universe pageants.
  
• Perved on his personal lawyer’s daughter.
  
• Has appointed the most billionaires to administrative positions in U.S history.
  
• Constantly undermines freedom of the press.
  
• Incites violence against journalists he doesn’t like.
  
• Has the highest turnover rate of any administration in history.
  
• Committed historic corruption by commuting the crimes of Roger Stone who was convicted by a jury of lying to shield him.
  
• Pardoned the campaign finance criminal Dinesh D’Souza
  
• All 3 of his campaign managers have faced criminal charges.
  
• Says John McCain was not a war hero because he was “captured”.
  
• Said not being applauded at the SOTU was equivalent to treason against the U.S.
  
• Took no action when informed about Russian bounties on U.S troops.
  
• Asked the Supreme Court to strike down the ACA during a pandemic.
  
• Retweeted a video of a man saying, “White power!”.
  
• Removed Saudi Arabia from the list of the worst human traffickers.
  
• Has threatened a 1-year sentence for flag burning.
  
• Hasn’t placed sanctions on China for Uighurs concentration camps.
  
• Is slowing USPS mail delivery before the election.
  
• Banned TikTok in the U.S.
  
• Shared political ads with Nazi symbols.
  
• Asked China for help with his re-election.
  
• Called deceased war heros “losers” and “suckers”.
  
• Hired a Postmaster General who’s already committed several crimes in office.
  
• Asked people in North Carolina to vote twice encouraging voter fraud.
  
• Suggested to “Get rid of the ballots” for mail-in votes when the election comes.
  
• Is resuming federal executions after a two-decade hiatus.
  
• Said the end result of Lincoln freeing the slaves was “Questionable”.
  
• Played on racist fears of terrorized suburbs to court white voters.
  
• Reversed transgender health protections.
  
• Made a personal donor with no experience head of the Post Office.
  
• Halted election security briefings.
  
• Defends Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions.
  
• Constantly incites violence against protestors.
  
• Continues to weaken protections for endangered species.
  
• Nominated Supreme Court justices who voted to allow religious employers to deny employees birth control.
  
• Is engaging in illegal money laundering in the 2020 election.
  
• Threatened to revoke schools’ tax-exempt status if they are considered “too liberal”.
  
• Suggested selling Puerto Rico as Hurricane Maria approached.
  
• Implemented a ban on transgender people from serving in the military.
  
• Attempted to cut HUD funding for affordable public housing.
  
• Carelessly held a large rally in the middle of pandemic that led to the death of a GOP presidential candidate.
  
• 54% of the country on average disapproves of Trump.
  
• Refers to women he doesn’t like as "fat pigs," "slobs," “dogs," and “nasty”.
  
• Had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
  
• Declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel just to please the evangelicals.
  
• Hypocritically hired undocumented workers at his businesses.
  
• Hypocritically outsourced manufacturing for many of his business products.
  
• Pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
  
• Floated the false and racist birther theory that Kamala Harris couldn’t serve as VP because her parents were immigrants.
  
• Constantly damages and discredits the CIA.
  
• Demanded loyalty from a former FBI director.
  
• Has a history of being anti-vaccine.
  
• Believes vaccines can cause autism in children.
  
• Says he plans to negotiate a third term which is unconstitutional.
  
• Won’t commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses.
  
• Constantly uses a racial epithet when mentioning Elizabeth Warren.
  
• Opposes universal healthcare.
  
• Compares officers who mistakenly use deadly force to golfers who miss putts.
  
• Used the White House for a political convention.
  
• Threatened to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funds from hospitals.
  
• Opposed emergency funds for the USPS.
  
• 5 military deferments.
  
• Said drug dealers should face the death penalty.
  
• Has engaged in union busting.
  
• Signed an executive order to create a fascist commission that promotes “patriotic education” in public schools.
  
• Has a history of making creepy incest jokes about Ivanka.
  
• Sold out and cozied up to Wall Street.
  
• Accused a senior who was severally injured by police of a “fake fall” and being in “Antifa”.
  
• Signed an executive order that hurt social media companies after having a tweet fact-checked.
  
• Claims to be a self-made billionaire when he actually inherited $413 million from his father.
  
• Caused the longest government shutdown in American history.
  
• Still has not released his tax returns.
  
• Saw his businesses rake in $1.9 billion in revenue and $470 million in profit while being in office.
  
• Assisted the Saudis in covering up Khashoggi’s murder.
  
• Denies climate change.
  
• Unwound 50 years of environmental regulation protections.
  
• Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord.
  
• Made a climate-denier head of the EPA.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Keystone XL pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• Signed an executive order to begin construction of the Dakota Access pipeline despite the environmental concerns.
  
• On track to drastically expand offshore oil drilling.
  
• Gutted NASA’s climate monitoring program.
  
• Loosened regulations on toxic air pollution.
  
• Dropped climate change from the list of national security threats.
  
• Increased annual military spending by $130 billion.
  
• Increased drone strikes by 432%.
  
• Abandoned the Kurds in Syria.
  
• Almost started a war with Iran.
  
• Withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal.
  
• Threatened North Korea with nukes
  
• Has dropped 10,000’s of bombs in the Middle East.
  
• Threatened to deploy 10,000 troops, use military action, “dominate”, and shoot BLM protestors.
  
• Had BLM protestors teargassed so he could pose for a bible photo-opt.
  
• Launched a fascist federal invasion into Portland, Oregon.
  
• Executively started a trade war with no strategy.
  
• Called for the 2020 election to be delayed for false reasons.
  
• Expanded the U.S-Mexico border wall.
  
• Reduced the number of refugees allowed in the U.S.
  
• Enacted measures to reduce the number of asylum seekers.
  
• Cut off government assistance to undocumented immigrants.
  
• Called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists”.
  
• Put restrictions on legal immigration.
  
• Has begun the removal of protections for Dreamers.
  
• Implemented a travel ban on 13 countries to “stop Muslims from entering the U.S.” Second source
  
• Keeping 70,000 migrant children in custody as well as cages.
  
• Gave more power to ICE.
  
• Separated deported immigrant children from their families.
  
• Suggested shooting immigrants who came across the southern border.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s out to gut public education.
  
• Picked an education secretary who increased protections for those accused of sexual assault.
  
• Picked an education secretary who’s being investigated for violating ethics laws.
  
• Wants to end public service loan forgiveness.
  
• Vetoed a student loan forgiveness bill.
  
• Attempted to cut the Department of Education’s budget for the fourth consecutive year.
  
• Repealed Net Neutrality.
  
• 19 million more Americans are uninsured for healthcare.Second Source
  
• Deliberately raised ACA premiums for 7.3 million people.
  
• Implemented work rules to qualify for Medicaid.
  
• Defunded Planned Parenthood with the global Gag Rule.
  
• 7.1 million+ coronavirus cases.
  
• 207,000 coronavirus deaths.
  
• Most coronavirus cases of any other country.
  
• Most coronavirus deaths of any other country.
  
• Encouraged his officials to “slow the testing down” for COVID-19.
  
• Wants to end federal funding for COVID-19 testing sites.
  
• Took 4 months to wear a mask publicly failing in leadership.
  
• Has failed to call for a temporary federal mask mandate.
  
• Deliberately downplayed the threat of COVID-19.
  
• Retweeted a conspiracy theory that only 9,000 were killed by COVID-19.
  
• Cut the CDC budget in both 2018 and 2019.
  
• Halted funding to the World Health Organization.
  
• Stripped the CDC of control of COVID-19 data.
  
• Is encouraging all schools to open back up during the middle of a pandemic.
  
• Encouraged people to drink chloroquine to fight the coronavirus.
  
• Encouraged people to inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus