At President Biden’s final State of the Union address, he backed the entire Republican Party into a corner, forcing them to deny that they were planning to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—just to hand billionaires a trillion-dollar tax cut. He… pic.twitter.com/UyhMZgk8AI
At President Biden’s final State of the Union address, he backed the entire Republican Party into a corner, forcing them to deny that they were planning to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—just to hand billionaires a trillion-dollar tax cut.
— LongTime🤓FirstTime👨💻 (@LongTimeHistory) May 22, 2025
A Texas woman was locked in jail 5 months—for having a miscarriage. A judge then gave custody of fetus to an anti-abortion group—who named it “Mary” and gave it a public funeral—all without the mother’s permission.
With bond set at $100K—so she was stuck in jail 5 months—including her 34th birthday. Mallori Patrice Strait was originally arrested for “abuse of a corpse” on December 19, 2024.
She was only released after medical examiner finally released its report that determined she had indeed miscarried—and that her fetus died in utero. The DA’s office also said there was “no direct evidence” that she tried to flush anything.
In 2024, too many people cared more about the price of eggs than this and they either stayed home or voted for Trump.
The Supreme Court that made it possible is supposed to save us now?
Considering that the country is in political crisis unseen in any of our lifetimes, it seems a little strange that the top issue being discussed among many in the media is a rehash of the story that people around former President Biden allegedly covered up that he aged demonstrably in office since we all saw that with our own eyes. Since this issue will almost certainly never happen again and has no relevance for the future it is odd that we are spending so much bandwidth discussing what feels like ancient history in this overwhelming tsunami of critical political news.
I’m not particularly interested in the story but for those who are, enjoy. However, I have been hearing a lot of the people who are obsessing over it repeating a devastating quote from the first debate, one which may have sealed Biden’s fate. In his closing argument he stumbled and inexplicably said “we beat Medicare!” It was obviously bizarre but in context it was clear that he meant “we beat Pharma.”
I thought of that when I heard our almost 79 year old current president say this on his recent overseas trip:
Trump: "We're doing what a lot of smart people would do, and we're not necessarily being politically correct. You saw what we did yesterday in healthcare. We've cut our healthcare by 50 to 90 percent." pic.twitter.com/ztUeuDrV3O
Coincidentally, that weird comment actually referred to Big Pharma as well. It seems to be a common glitch among geriatric presidents.
As it happens, both men were right but in Trump’s case not in the way he thought he was. Biden was referring to the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that allowed Medicare, for the first time, to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies to lower prices for some of the most commonly prescribed medications. They succeeded in substantially lowering the price of some commonly prescribed drugs for diabetes and heart disease and were going forward with others.
So far, Trump has left that in place but he did roll back a number of other initiatives that had just started to roll out as soon as he took office. In that speech in Saudi Arabia he was talking about his Executive Order ordering the big international pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices to those paid by other countries or else. His order, as with everything else he’s doing, will be met with a flood of litigation that could take years to work out. Who knows if anything will ever come of it.
But Trump saying “we’ve cut our healthcare by 50-90%” may actually be true, although as usual he fudged the numbers. If the provisions in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” the House just passed actually make it to his desk he will have gone a long way toward cutting the healthcare of many millions of Americans. And this is despite his specific, repeated promises that he would not do it. He even went up to congress earlier this week as they were marking it up and said “don’t fuck around with Medicaid.”
And why are they doing this? Well, they say we just have to cut spending because the budget deficit is out of control. Except they are also cutting taxes and their cuts, as usual, will benefit the wealthy much more than the pittance they throw at the feet of the poor and the middle class. They are literally robbing the poor to give to the rich.
Steven Rattner explains how that shakes out in this appearance on MSNBC:
"If you're in the top 20%, you're gonna get 3.7% increase in after tax income from tax cuts. If you're in the bottom, you lose $800. You get a small tax cut and and a large cut in Medicaid and other benefits."pic.twitter.com/CRjWNrOFdl
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 22, 2025
They are also exploding the deficit beyond anything we might have imagined, adding at least $3.1 trillion. The alleged deficit hawks in the House grumbled but they went along. After all, this is a tax cut bill and they’re Republicans. They may not ever get much of anything done but if there’s one thing they always do, no matter the circumstances, is cut taxes for their rich benefactors. It’s as predictable as Donald Trump winning the championship at his golf course every year. And, as former Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” It’s always been just a talking point.
They usually talk big about cuts like this and then come back to earth when they realize that many of their constituents and donors will be hit. But this time they apparently are either resigned to losing their majority next year and want to pass as much of their sadistic policy wish list as possible before they are in the wilderness or they believe that Donald Trump really is so all-powerful that he will sweep in and save them. Or maybe they just figure they’ll be able to get rich[er] and retire from all their insider trading on the financial market gyrations caused by Trump’s erratic tariff policies. But their determination to turn America so toxic that the bond market is becoming very shaky and investors are starting pull out could have some very serious unintended consequences. All that new debt they’re creating is going to get mighty expensive.
Trump has obviously given in on the Medicaid cuts. It’s not like he ever really cared about any of his “populist” promises not to touch the “entitlements.” They were just campaign slogans to appeal to the rubes. But it turns out that he might just be touching the real third rail. The Republicans are raising the deficit so high that it may trip sequestration under the PAYGO act which would require mandatory cuts to Medicare in the vicinity of half a trillion dollars.
It’s possible that they’ll finesse their way out of is somehow. They’re just tossing aside norms and changing the rules willy nilly now whenever they need to. But if the Democrats are smart they will make sure that the public is aware that this is now an issue because Republicans made it one with their over-the-top, budget busting “Big Butt-Ugly Bill.”
We are constantly hearing from Democrats that you have to talk about “kitchen table issues” in order to appeal to the voters. Well, the Republicans just threw a huge pile of issues, including the kitchen sink, right in the middle of the table for them to take to the country. The mid-term campaign has begun.
A Wednesday discussion on “Morning Joe” of The Ink post, “The reckoning that wasn’t,” crystallizes the problem Democrats’ out-of-touch, sclerotic leadership faces in changing perceptions of the party’s sagging brand: Why isn’t Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in leadership? [timestamp 10:37}:
Joe Scarborough: I don’t think anybody who watches this show would confuse my politics with AOC’s politics. And yet I sit here, a fairly conservative independent, absolutely flummoxed by a Democratic Party that refuses to let her in leadership. Proving that the House is not a meritocracy, never was a meritocracy. The fact that they’re afraid to have the person who is considered in polls to be the voice and the face of the Democratic Party….
She does a better job of getting out there and explaining the inequities that drive working Americans to Republicans. She also, to her credit, talked to people who voted for Donald Trump and voted for her [and didn’t crtiticize them]. And by the way, she’s under 80!
So you’re telling me that the Democratic Party does not have a place for her in the leadership? Do you know how insane that is?!
Anand Giridharadas: It is categorically insane. It is actually the litmus test that the Democrats do have, which is if you are exciting and thrilling and galvanizing to people, please stay way from any important job in our party.
The DNC recently picked “a very lackluster chair,” Giridharadas took as an example. In his The Ink post, he called the party’s failure of self-examination a “pandemic of incuriosity.” On Thursday morning it proved, IMHO, an epic strategic failure.
At those “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies AOC puts on with Bernie Sanders, Giridharadas claimed, eight to ten percent of the people showing up are Republicans. (I can’t find figures supporting that.)
And Steve Bannon is afraid of AOC as the future of the Democratic Party, adds Jonathan Lemire, because her message resonates and shares some overlap with some of what the MAGA movement believes.
Many Americans consider Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the face of the Democratic Party, according to new polling.
In the latest Co/efficient survey, 26% of respondents said Ocasio-Cortez — who represents New York’s 14th Congressional District — is the party’s standard-bearer.
An additional 26%, said “no one” is the face of the party, and 22% said “other,” indicating there is no consensus on this question.
The poll — which sampled 1,462 likely voters May 7-9 — found that the seven other listed Democrats all garnered substantially less support.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders came in a distant second, with 12%, while Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett placed third, with 8%.
After them came Vice President Kamala Harris (6%), former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (5%) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (5%).
I’m sure Jeffries is a highly competent legislator, but as party frontman he’s Mr. Rogers on Quaaludes.
An April YouGov survey found [AOC] held a +61 approval rating among Democrats, marking the highest rating of any prominent Democrat who has not run for vice president or president.
Similarly, in an April Quantus Insights poll, 19% of Democrats and left-leaning independents said Ocasio-Cortez “best reflects the core values” of the party. Meanwhile, other leading figures in the party garnered less support, including Harris, who received 17%.
“The Court of Star Chamber, known simply as the Star Chamber, was a supplement to common-law courts in England. The Star Chamber drew its authority from the king’s sovereign power and privileges and was not bound by the common law.” ThoughtCo. Image: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons.
Since before reaching the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said loudly that our economic system is rigged. By the rich. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) concurs. You thought the people doing the rigging would stop there? Oh, child.
Democracy Docket describes the newest rigging succinctly (emphasis mine):
The multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill the House GOP passed Thursday includes a provision that would, if it becomes law, curtail when courts can force parties to comply with their orders.
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section,” the provision reads.
The measure would require that judges collect a bond from all parties seeking a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction, otherwise the resulting orders will be unenforceable.
Currently, judges have the ability to issue injunctive bonds to protect the target of the court’s order from potential harm if the order is later found to have been wrongfully issued. But they often don’t require such bonds in lawsuits against the government, as plaintiffs may have limited resources and the government likely won’t be substantially injured by orders.
On its face, the change appears quite small. But as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, recently noted, the provision would render hundreds and hundreds of other court orders in cases unrelated to Trump unenforceable.
This MAGA tweak does not just apply to court orders going forward. Chemerinsky adds, “It would apply to all temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and even permanent injunctions ever issued. By its terms, it applies to court orders ‘issued prior to, on, or subsequent’ to its adoption.”
To review, I’ve used this example here for over a decade. To wit:
We’re dealing with people who would sell you the air you breathe if they could control how it gets to your nose. And if you cannot afford to buy their air, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.
Over the top? Hyperbolic?
I referenced the example again last Friday after Donald Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, argued before SCOTUS that nationwide injunctions issued against the Trump administration should be impermissible. It’s one thing for plaintiffs whose constitutional rights Trump violated to sue and win an injunction in District Court. It’s another for a District Court judge to issue a nationwide injunction that protects similarly situated and threatened Americans who didn’t sue, Sauer argued. Those freeloaders should have to bring their own cases, by the thousands if necessary. And until they do, and win in their cases, Trump should be able to violate their constitutional rights.
Americans, Sauer implied on Trump’s behalf, are entitled to just as much protection of their constitutional rights as they can afford to defend in court. And if you can’t afford to sue to defend your constitutional rights, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.
Now, MAGA Republicans want to gut even protections won in past cases. Your court victories are meaningless. Chemerinsky:
Because federal courts rarely have required plaintiffs to post bonds, it would mean that hundreds and hundreds of court orders – in cases ranging from antitrust to protection of private tax information, to safeguarding the social security administration, to school desegregation to police reform – would be rendered unenforceable. Even when the government had been found to violate the Constitution, nothing could be done to enforce the injunctions against it. In fact, the greatest effect of adopting the provision would be to make countless existing judicial orders unenforceable. If enacted, judges will be able to set the bond at $1 so it can be easily met. But all existing judicial orders where no bond was required would become unenforceable.
This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the contempt power is integral to the authority of the federal courts. Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions which parties are free to disregard.
Just what an aspiring dictator might want while barely keeping up democratic appearances. You should have worked harder, planned better, and been born rich.
Even Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is stunned. He writes that the bill “appears meant to spare the federal government any legal consequences for even deliberate, continuing, and belligerent defiance of court orders.”
Olson continues, “If the district judges are no longer in a position to enforce contempt orders, why even bother appealing? The feds (and others, too) could just thumb their noses at them and go on their way.” Adoption of this change would mean “open season on rights!”
The rich rigging the economy was just the beginning. Rigging elections was systematic. “Surgical” even. Now they are coming for the courts and your constitutional rights.
This provision still has to survive Senate amendments, so be sure to ask your senators to strip it out before voting the thing down.
Of course if signed into law, the provision will be challenged in court. Trump will lose. He will appeal. And appeal again, all the way to SCOTUS. At this point, it would be foolish to predict what the outcome of that case would be. By then, Trump’s grip on the reins of power may have tightened through threats, arrests, and intimidation to the point that a majority of justices may fear crossing him. But even if SCOTUS does slap down this encroachment on judicial powers, Trump and his henchmen will be free to violate your rights with abandon.
Responding to those who are pushing for an end to war in Gaza, Netanyahu says he “is ready to end the war, under clear conditions that will ensure the safety of Israel – all the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip… Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.”
Even Netanyahu sounds like he’s in a Trump cabinet meeting.
The last I heard they were talking about moving the Palestinians to Libya. I don’t know how they plan to do it except rounding up and putting millions of people on planes. I guess they think they can do that?
I don’t know if that’s still on the table but in the meantime, Bibi says that in order to keep his “friends” in the Senate happy he has to do some kind of humanitarian thing for the Gazans who are suffering and dying now of starvation which just sounds like a PR move.
Trump isn’t getting anywhere with his bff even with all his promises of “deals.” Imagine that:
On a call Monday, President Trump told European leaders that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t ready to end the Ukraine war because he thinks he is winning, according to senior European officials familiar with the conversation.
European leaders had long believed this—but it was the first time they were hearing it from Trump, these officials said. It also ran counter to what Trump has often said publicly, that he believes Putin genuinely wants peace.
In a statement after an earlier version of this article was published, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, disputed the accounts, saying Trump “did say he believes Putin is winning the war BUT he NEVER said ‘Putin isn’t ready to end war.’”
Leavitt said Trump said several times during the call that “he believes Putin wants peace and wants the war to be over.”
One of the officials, who was on the call, said Trump began the discussion by saying, “I think Vladimir does not want peace.”
I can tell you who I believe… mainly because it’s obvious. Of course Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants surrender. And he wants it all.
The Europeans realize that Trump isn’t going to help. He hates Ukraine and he hates Europe and the only reason he’s been trying half-heartedly to broker a peace is so he could get credit for doing it and win the Nobel Peace Prize.
But there is a silver lining. His buddies in the military industrial complex want their money:
While the effort ultimately didn’t succeed in getting Trump to do that through additional sanctions, Europeans saw some upside to the outcome. The process had helped clarify for everyone, including Trump, where Putin stood: He is unwilling to halt the war at this stage. And for the Europeans, it helped underscore that it was now largely up to them to support Ukraine. Europeans don’t believe the Trump administration will stop U.S. weapons exports as long as Europe or Ukraine pays for them, the officials said.
I’m sure he’d like a taste. Maybe they could buy him a nice, expensive bauble to sweeten the deal.
“I don’t think the commissioner of Social Security is like a globally known title. It is to you, right? But, like, it wasn’t to me,” Bisignano said. “I’m like, ‘Well, what am I gonna do?’ So I’m Googling ‘Social Security.’ That’s one of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast … I’m like, ‘What the heck’s the commissioner of Social Security?’”
When it comes to rolling out new tools, Bisignano said his first tech priority is to deploy AI on the agency’s phone lines.
Awesome. He’s a very fast googler. He’ll figure it all out in no time.
President Donald Trump will host a gathering of VIPs at his private golf resort outside Washington, D.C., on Thursday. These are not diplomats or heads of state. They are rich people, foreign and domestic, who have put money into the Trump family’s pockets.
The dinner is for winners of a contest — the crypto traders who raced to become the top 220 holders of the president’s $TRUMP meme coin. According to one analysis, they collectively accumulated about $150 million of the crypto asset, which has no intrinsic value and is equivalent to a digital baseball card.
The contest has made Trump’s family crypto business money on each transaction. And it has swelled the president’s personal net worth, by driving up the price of the coin, which the family business holds massive reserves of.
The meme coin contest is just the latest example of Trump wielding the public office of the presidency for his private enrichment. In fact, sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that one of the lessons Trump took away from his previous stint in the White House is that he was wrong to leave a ton of money on the table as president.
The president himself has privately said this on multiple occasions in recent months and years, according to two people who’ve been in the room with him. In moments of casual banter, Trump has mentioned that it was “stupid” of other Republicans and advisers to convince him — at least on occasion — to side with government ethicists who cautioned him from obliterating the line between public good and private gain.
Wek now this is true because he’s said it publicly. As the article points out he said at the White House, “I mean, I could be a stupid person saying, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”
Both in public and behind closed doors, Trump often repeats a new mantra: It does not matter how much lucrative new business the Trump Organization or his children engage in while Trump is the president, because he and his family are so wealthy that he doesn’t need that new cash flow or windfalls — and therefore, he must be unbribable. (For his part, Trump’s son Eric has abandoned concerns about the optics or appearance of corruption, telling The Wall Street Journal that his efforts to keep certain interests of the Trump Organization and the first Trump presidency separate went unrewarded. “I got very little credit for it,” he said. “We still kind of got stomped on.”)
Nothing to see here folks:
On Monday, Reuters reported that the Trump Organization and a local partner are considering building a skyscraper in Vietnam, after the country approved the Trump family empire’s plans for a $1.5 billion luxury residential development and golf club. Eric Trump attended the golf club’s groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday with Vietnam’s prime minister. Vietnam is simultaneously working to negotiate a tariff deal with the Trump administration.
That’s just one of many foreign Trump Org deals like that all over the world. But sure, Trump’s unbribable. We’ve seen how stalwart he is in defending American interests above his own. The article goes on to list many more of them and they are legion.
Donald Trump’s private clubs have emerged as a moneymaking venture for the president’s second term, and a hub for donors and favor-seekers alike.
It now costs a record $1 million to join Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, according to people familiar with the membership fees, up from about $500,000 during his first term.
The initiation fee at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., rose to $125,000, surging from $75,000 in recent years, a person close to that club said. Another Trump golf club in Florida, near Mar-a-Lago, now charges more than $300,000 to join, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump has encouraged Republican Party officials to hold events at his clubs, where he headlines official dinners and cocktail parties. The clubs have in turn also attracted a new clientele of donors seeking to influence policy in the White House, including cryptocurrency executives pushing for deregulation, advocates seeking pardons for allies, and business leaders looking for exemptions from tariffs, among others.
He makes this so easy for them. All they really have to do is give him a big juicy kiss and tell him how powerful and strong and handsome he is, hand him some cash and he’ll believe anything they say as long as it comports with his fascist worldview. That’s not hard.
Thune’s “nuclear” option: Senate Republicans are set to overrule the parliamentarian—the authoritative, nonpartisan interpreter of the upper chamber’s rules. It’s an extremely rare action, which has both sides extremely defensive about it. For their part, Republicans tell me that this maneuver is both necessary and institutionally benign. Meanwhile, Democrats are lambasting it as a major breach of precedent. Naturally, both parties are exaggerating.
Both sides, dontcha know.
At issue is a California rule mandating that all new cars sold in the state be electric by 2035. The Biden administration approved the rule, which Republicans want to overturn because they are opposed to mandates, electric vehicles… and California (kidding! Kind of…). Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, advised Republicans that the Government Accountability Office determined that it’s not a federal rule, and thus not subject to congressional review. Rather than back off, Republicans have moved to overrule her.
Balls, sheer balls.
Doing this can create an opening to justify larger changes to Senate rules down the road, though Senate Majority Leader John Thune called the electric-car mandate a “novel and narrow issue,” and said overturning it wouldn’t set a precedent or make any difference to Senate rules. On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called out Republicans for “going nuclear to appease the fossil fuel industry, and at the same time erode away the institution they profess to care about.”
He’s right. But that’s not really the point. We know they’re hostage to the oil companies. This is about making overruling the parliamentarian routine and you can bet they’ll do whenever they need to from now on. They no longer believe in rules. Why would they stop at this?
Privately, some Republicans didn’t necessarily disagree, and they’ve struggled over what to do in closed-door meetings. Former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been an outspoken opponent of efforts to change Senate rules of late (except, of course, when he changed them to more easily confirm Supreme Court judges), spoke in support of overturning the rule, which changed the tenor of the conversation for his party.
Of course McConnell spoke in favor of it. He’s the biggest rule breaker of all. Look at the Supreme Court.
Here the reporter gets a little bit cute:
The fact that Democrats are crying foul, however, is pure hypocrisy. After all, they tried to get rid of the filibuster in the last Congress, and would have been successful had Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema not broken ranks. Schumer himself was promising to revisit the issue on the campaign trail last year, vowing to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation if Democrats won the Senate, House, and White House.
These are not the same thing. Getting rid of the filibuster is one rule that obstructs the Senate and the Republicans will get rid of it the first time they need to. Overruling the parliamentarian is a free for all.
I guess the Republicans assume they will have the Senate majority for the foreseeable future and they’re probably right. Dislodging Republicans in red states is probably going to be impossible. They just won’t certify the elections if Democrats win. So the rules are no longer operative unless they want them to be. That’s how they roll.
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