Planned Parenthood by Executive Order caused opposition by Senate and House Progressives and many of its supporters for women health care. Senators were able to hinder almost all legislative actions supported by the Powers Administration, bogging even confirmation progress. Several national PACs prepared and aired commercials showing the non-abortion activities of Planned Parenthood and what women think about the organization. An Alt-Right organization countered this with true and false claims about its abortion activities.
Because of the Ukrainian invasion, the Powers Administration put their efforts to establish a new relationship with the Russian Federation on hold.
In a top secret briefing, the President and Vice President were briefed on American capabilities to shut down a country’s or city’s internet or cause an electric power outage. Powers requested a small test to demonstrate this capability to be done. This information came to light years later in the Peter Lincoln Administration, and explains (maybe) why St. Petersburg suffered the massive power failure on March 2-4 during a major snow storm and Tunisia lost internet access during the first week of March.
Near midnight on February 28th, the plane carrying two United States Senators (both Conservatives) with several Department of Energy senior officials, crashed in Alaska, killing all aboard. They had been visiting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge exploring how to open it up for expanded oil and gas exploration. They came from two states where the Conservative Governor was prohibited from appointing someone temporary to the Senate seat until a special election could be held. This would take almost ninety days before their replacements were elected and sworn in as Senators. During this time, Progressives now controlled the United States Senate with a 50-48 majority and Vicky Turner became Majority Leader. Confirmations and legislation favoring the Powers Administration’s policies came to a near halt.
On March 1st, the Secretary of Defense announced new appointments for almost every four star command and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. Buried in the press release were almost two hundred retirements of flag officers and proposed appointments of several Lieutenant General and Vice Admiral positions. All of these would require Senate confirmations. The Department of Defense over the coming months would announce retirements and appointments for hundreds of flag officers.
President Powers gave a national speech on March 9th to a meeting of the American Legion, demanding that the Senate confirm his new generals and admirals and the Senate promptly consider the declaration of war on the Salafi Jihadist Military Caliphate (SJMC) passed by the House of Representatives. The Progressives in the Senate, with seven Conservatives, voted the declaration down on March 10th.
The Border Patrol reported on March 12th that it had stopped about a dozen attempts to smuggle cash into Mexico, in line with the restrictions implemented to prohibit wire transfers by illegal immigrants. Press reports originating late in March showed the effects on family members in Mexico from no longer receiving cash payments from the United States. The Mexican government continued to insist that they would not be paying for the Powers Border Wall.
The Departments of State and Commerce established a cross-agency team to re-negotiate NAFTA with Canada and Mexico. They set a meeting with both countries in Mexico City on March 16th, but neither country showed up to the meeting. Powers’ general counsel determined that Congressional legislation would be needed for the United States to walk away from NAFTA. Vice President Mitchell’s assessment is that Powers lacked support in the House and Senate to terminate NAFTA. The situation regarding TPP Expanded was more a little more clear, because Congress had not yet approved it. President Powers submitted a proposal to walk away from this trade agreement. Both houses voted against it on March 10th.
Powers’ son was really struggling with all his trade assignments. Everything planned was getting bogged down, including challenging the WTO to expel China, developing a strategy to renegotiate other trade agreements, or pursuing trade relief cases with the WTO. The President decided to tutor him and accompanied him on several assignments.
The United States Navy deployed two carrier task forces in the South China Sea, as directed by the President.
At the end of March, both the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency missed their deadline to submit a closure plan to the White House. Since the President had not appointed anyone to either agency, he had no one to drive his policy to transfer functions to the states. Vice President Mitchell suggested to the President that he appoint a person to lead both agencies in order to get them closed.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced rules on March 12th to transfer Medicaid funding to the states as block grants. On the same day, the Department of State issued increases in visa fees, new rules to increase the prevailing wage for H-1B visa holders, and elimination of the J-1 visa program. The Department of Transportation quietly announced that it had signed a competitive bid contract with the TAP Infrastructure Corporation to develop a comprehensive transportation infrastructure plan, though no one could recall any announcement of a request for bids.
The State Department continued to be bogged down in developing proposed approaches to improving relations with India, achieving a new peace between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, and developing a listing of countries being un-American and supporting terrorism. President Powers called in all his State Department appointees to chew them out during the weekend of March 20th in a long meeting at the Nashville White House. Two assistant deputy secretaries resigned from the Powers Administration in protest. Powers ordered Edward to get off the pot and get his people in line with the administration.
During mid-March, there were several news articles reporting that ICE had hired the TAP Infrastructure Corporation to build a dozen detention centers for illegal immigrants. The White House Press Secretary would not comment on grounds of national security. Meanwhile, ICE continued to send about fifty illegal immigrants a month to Guantanamo Bay. Several reports also focused on the call-ups of reserve military police units to run detention centers and the appropriateness of these efforts.
Congress voted on March 22nd against legislation proposed by Powers to require E-Verify to be used for all hiring decisions outside the federal government, such as private sector employers and state and local governments. Likewise, a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Trumpcare) was voted down in the Senate on the same day. In response to several Conservative Congressional concerns, the House began working on an alternate health care program to replace Trumpcare.
The Attorney General provided the Vice President with several proposed legislative proposals, regarding a large number of subjects. Due to the loss of the Senate, Mitchell decided to hold these until after the special elections for the two Senate seats. This would delay the House from starting to consider many key initiatives of the Powers Administration – changes in tax laws, repeal of Dodd-Frank law, trade violations, penalties for overstaying visas, allowing defamation lawsuits against the press, etc.
The Department of Homeland Security developed processes for extreme vetting and how to identify persons supporting the institution of Sharia law in the United States. The Office of Management and Budget on March 22nd proposed new rules that would allow any federal civilian employee to be terminated for cause within thirty days. A public outcry started when San Francisco filed suit on March 26th in a federal District Court saying that the federal government was failing to make required payments to the city because it was a sanctuary city.
More press reports during March focused on the apparent ban of Muslims, Syrians, Iraqis, and individuals from several countries from entering the United States on previously authorized immigration and visa documentation. The White House Press Office continued to refuse to answer any questions on this on the grounds of national security. The ACLU and other organizations filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for records concerning what the United States policy now is.
 
; A cross-agency group led by the Departments of State and Homeland Security developed extremely reduced numbers of legal immigration under the grounds that the United States needs to first secure its border with Mexico. This would be used to continue the temporary suspension of issuing legal immigrant documentation. The Department of the Treasury also provided the White House with its plan to refinance the federal debt, which the President approved on March 30th to implement.
The House conducted hearings on the proposed 28th Amendment. The House leadership decided to delay any vote on the floor until the Senate was back in Conservative hands.
On Sunday, April 4th, North Korea launched an unarmed ballistic missile towards a splashdown in the North Atlantic, flying over the continental United States. The United States North American Command went on high alert and prepared to shoot down the missile if it were to fall short of its target. The missile did slightly miss its target, landing near, and slightly damaging a Liberian freighter in the Atlantic.
Since now North Korea had intercontinental capable missiles, this activated a National Defense Directive issued by President Eric Trump to