Tag Archives: White House

MSNBC: There’s a reason Republicans want to hide what’s in their newly passed megabill

Posted on by
Reply

If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not.

Early Wednesday, when most Americans were snuggled in their beds, Republicans in the House of Representatives were working hard to take away the health care of millions of Americans, blow a $3 trillion hole in the budget deficit and make the wealthiest people in America richer and the poorest Americans poorer.

If this sounds like hyperbole, it’s not. The GOP-controlled House Rules Committee convened at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning to discuss a bill that hasn’t been fully drafted and the provisions of which were still part of intense negotiations. Indeed, the real work on the legislation was happening behind closed doors as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to cobble together enough votes to pass something, anything, so he could meet his self-imposed deadline for a floor vote by Memorial Day. Late Wednesday, GOP leaders released yet more significant changes to the bill, and on Thursday morning the full House passed the bill by a single vote.

What we do know about the legislation the GOP is calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is genuinely terrifying.

According to an analysis published Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, the numbers in the GOP’s draft legislation are brutal. The bill would increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion — a rise that is spooking bond markets already worried about the president’s tariff increases. The bill would slash $267 billion in federal spending for SNAP, which more than 42 million low-income people rely on to put food on the table for their families. And it would cut nearly $700 billion from federal funding for Medicaid.

The CBO estimated Tuesday that the Medicaid cuts could cause roughly 8 million people to lose their health insurance coverage, and that number could rise to 15 million thanks to other provisions in the legislation. The amendments revealed Wednesday, writes Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, surely “would lead to more people losing health insurance.” But Republicans scrambled to vote Thursday before the CBO could update its totals.

All this is being done to extend the Trump tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit wealthy people. The impact of the GOP’s bill is extraordinary in both its cruelty and its extreme inequality. According to the CBO’s estimate, household resources for the poorest people would decrease by 4% over the next eight years, while the richest people’s household resources would increase by 4%.

Opinion | There’s a reason Republicans want to hide what’s in their megabill
If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/republican-house-bill-medicaid-snap-cuts-tax-cut-trump-rcna208380

NSNBC: Trump isn’t cutting red tape. He’s creating more of it for average Americans.

Posted on by
Reply

Trump plans would make it harder to get Medicaid, register to vote and pay your taxes.

But when it comes to average Americans, the president and his allies in Congress are fine with making it harder to file your taxes, receive benefits, access government services or register to vote.

Consider a few recent examples:

• The Trump administration plans to end an IRS pilot program that allowed some taxpayers with simple returns to file their federal taxes online for free. 

• In the megabill comprising much of Trump’s first-year agenda, House Republicans are moving ahead with new work requirements to qualify for health insurance through Medicaid.

• The Trump administration developed a plan (since rescinded) to require more Americans applying for Social Security to visit offices in person to prove their identities.

• Another Republican bill would require ID such as a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote (and a marriage certificate, too, if you’re a woman who changed her name).

Let’s call this what it is: red tape — needless box-checking, form-filling and drudgery that accomplishes nothing except making it harder for Americans to get what they need.

Opinion | Republican red tape
Trump plans would make it harder to get Medicaid, register to vote and pay your taxes.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-medicaid-social-security-red-tape-rcna207999

MSNBC: What the FDA’s new Covid vaccine policy is really about

Posted on by
Reply

With the current leadership at FDA and HHS, the incentives are simply stacked against humane vaccine policy.

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to significantly curtail people’s access to Covid-19 vaccines. Under the new framework, outlined in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad, routine approval of updated vaccines will be limited to the elderly and vulnerable only. Approval for the rest of the “healthy” population will require extensive, costly testing.

While Makary and Prasad claimed their policy “balances the need for evidence,” critics noted a number of problems with the plan right away. Some of the research demanded for broad approval of new Covid vaccines was infeasible and even unethical. There were no carve-outs for caregivers upon whom vulnerable people depend. The timing of the release appeared primed to usurp the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes vaccine recommendations.

…

The success of those efforts may have contributed to Trump’s return to office after mismanaging the crisis during his first term. The president himself seems to think so. Last month, the White House replaced the informational covid.gov website with a new page promoting the speculative lab leak theory of the pandemic’s origins and featuring sections on the harms of lockdowns and mask mandates.

The FDA’s new guidance on Covid vaccines can be seen as an extension of this effort, using the imprimatur of the agency to validate misleading and false narratives promoted by the right about the Covid — namely that the vaccines are insufficiently tested with unknown effects and unsuited for young people. Indeed, the authors of the policy were themselves prolific spreaders of those narratives.

…

The FDA commissioner role was the big prize, however. Serving under his ally, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. — a longtime anti-vaccine activist who called the Covid jab “the deadliest ever made” — Makary was bound to take a stab at the vaccines.

All of the signs were there. One of his first acts was to bring on another vaccine skeptic, Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, a physical medicine doctor and epidemiologist who had worked in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Health Department, as his special assistant. The pair had collaborated on a Brownstone project called the Norfolk Group, which crafted an outline for a congressional inquiry into the federal Covid response ahead of the subcommittee hearing. With Høeg on the team, Makary’s FDA held up the scheduled approval of the Novavax booster, eventually scaling it back and limiting it to the elderly and the vulnerable in a precursor to Tuesday’s policy announcement.

Earlier this month, Makary also brought Prasad into the agency as its top vaccine regulator. Prasad, like Makary, has a link to Brownstone and spent years criticizing the FDA over Covid jabs, hyping up safety concerns about rare side effects like myocarditis, questioning their efficacy and suggesting that the risk-benefit ratio disfavored approval.

…

As The Wall Street Journal noted the previous month in an infographic, the bivalent doses did not need to undergo human testing for safety since the original omicron strain vaccines did. “The changes simply update proven shots,” the graphic explained. “The process is similar to the development of the annual flu shots, which are given without testing them in people.”

…

Billions of doses have been given over the years. There has been extensive safety monitoring of the vaccines, which have saved millions of lives in the United States and prevented even more hospitalizations. The data shows they reduce Covid transmission and the odds of getting long Covid and offer robust protection against severe illness and death.

With the current leadership at FDA and HHS, the incentives are simply stacked against humane vaccine policy. The only question is how far the agency will go. Is this new guidance the start of a complete phase-out of the vaccines, and might other immunizations follow? Time will tell.

Opinion | The far-right learned to weaponize Covid. And it’s about to effect all of us.
With the current leadership at FDA and HHS, the incentives are simply stacked against humane vaccine policy.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trumps-new-covid-vaccine-restrictions-are-right-wing-conspiracy-theori-rcna208317

MSNBC: Trump admin blocks Harvard from enrolling international students, escalating radical fight

Posted on by
Reply

The administration has gone from eliminating Harvard’s grants to targeting its tax-exempt status to halting its ability to enroll international students.

Harvard University has faced an unprecedented and radical offensive from Donald Trump and his team, which to date has focused on eliminating federal grants to the school, while simultaneously targeting Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

There is, however, a third element of the offensive. The New York Times reported:

The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, a major escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure the college to fall in line with the president’s agenda. The administration notified Harvard about the decision after a back-and-forth in recent days over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem personally sent a letter to the university, which she posted to X later Thursday, that read in part, “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”

This development is extraordinary, but it does not appear out of the blue: In mid-April, while canceling nearly $3 million in DHS grants to Harvard, Noem simultaneously demanded that the university turn over records on foreign students alleged to have engaged in “illegal and violent activities.” Failure to cooperate would jeopardize Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification — which allows schools to admit international students.

Evidently, [Bimbo #2] Noem has now followed through on that threat.

This may well be the undoing of Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem, as she learns that that the tentacles of Harvard’s alumni extend everywhere.

Trump admin blocks Harvard from enrolling international students, escalating radical fight
The administration has gone from eliminating Harvard’s grants to targeting its tax-exempt status to halting its ability to enroll international students.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-admin-blocks-harvard-enrolling-international-students-escalating-rcna208587

MSNBC: I confronted Sec. Noem [Bimbo #2] because our democracy is threatened like never before

Posted on by
Reply

President Trump has demonstrated he’s willing to tell any lie to justify jailing anyone.

Last month, President Donald Trump shared an edited image of the knuckles of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident with protected status wrongfully sent to a Salvadoran detention facility. The photo showed “MS13” apparently added above his knuckle tattoos, even though other photos of his hand did not have that text. Last week, I had a chance to ask Homeland Security Security Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem if she had investigated how an edited image came into the president’s hands. Not only did she refuse to answer, she barely acknowledged that the image was edited.

Politics is hyperbole. I know that voters have become inured to politicians saying, “The opposing party is the end of the country as we know it!” But what we are witnessing today is like nothing we have seen since the founding of this country, almost 250 years ago. Every warning light on democracy’s dashboard now flashes red.

Since taking the Oval Office, Trump has never been coy about his ambitions to rule as a dictator rather than serve as a president, accountable to the people who put him there. In just the past few months, he’s laid out the groundwork to jail innocent people and silence his political enemies, all under the guise of “law and order.” Perhaps in just a few months, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions will be realized. And it will be like how Hemingway described how one grows broke: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”Just last week, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and one of his longest-serving enablers, said the White House was “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus for immigrants.

Let’s be clear: Suspending the constitutional right to challenge unlawful detention is not some academic exercise or abstract policy debate, as many on the right may claim. Miller is deadly serious. There is no ambiguity. Equally explicit is the United States Constitution: Only Congress can suspend habeas corpus, and only in cases of actual rebellion or invasion.

Suspending habeas corpus is the move of dictators and despots.

Click the link below to read the whole article:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/eric-swalwell-kristi-noem-kilmar-abrego-garcia-rcna207275

MSNBC: The giant Trump banner at the USDA is another sign the U.S. is sliding into autocracy

Posted on by
Reply

It may be small and petty, but these changes are part of the erosion of democratic norms, softening people up for potentially more authoritarian behavior.

Many strongmen also love to display giant photos of themselves wherever they can. If you ever go to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, you’ll be greeted with a portrait of Mao Zedong. Mao founded the People’s Republic of China, and he served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party for more than 30 years. His portrait is about 19½ feet tall and 15 feet wide, and it weighs about 3,000 pounds. It’s been hanging over the gate leading into the Forbidden City since 1949.

If you travel farther to the east, you’ll find something similar in North Korea. In the country’s capital of Pyongyang, there’s an area called Kim Il Sung Square, where you’ll find large portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the great leader and the dear leader, respectively, overlooking the plaza at all times as people go about their daily lives.

When Putin visited the country last year, North Koreans gave him a warm welcome by plastering his photo everywhere. They even temporarily put up a humongous portrait of Putin next to one of Kim Jong Un during a welcome ceremony.

Neither China nor North Korea invented this idea. They’ve taken their cues from Joseph Stalin, the former brutal ruler of the Soviet Union. He liked to have portraits of himself displayed in public and lofted by his supporters during parades.

That practice continues in many other countries where strongmen rule today. You see it in places like Egypt, where the face of its president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, is inescapable. His mug is on billboards and banners, plastered on buildings and hanging along the roadside. That’s especially true ahead of an election, and it’s no wonder he’s been able to easily win three terms in office. (Not to mention the fact that Egypt doesn’t exactly have free and fair elections in the first place.)

In Iran, you’ll find an abundance of murals, posters and portraits of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He’s often depicted with the country’s late leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Their images are displayed everywhere — at mosques, in malls and even on the sides of some buildings.

And now, something like that is happening in the United States, too. Last week, a giant banner with Donald Trump’s official portrait was displayed on the United States Department of Agriculture building in Washington, D.C., alongside a similar banner featuring Abraham Lincoln.

Hail, Donald! Long live the King!

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-usda-portrait-road-from-to-authoritarianism-rcna207709

MSNBC: Following vote from Senate Republicans, another ex-con joins Team Trump

Posted on by
Reply

It’s not common for people to transition from prison to a diplomatic position in Paris, but in Trump world, strange things happen.

Two weeks after Election Day 2024, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama assured the public that Donald Trump wouldn’t choose “a criminal” for a governmental position. About a week later, the then-president-elect tapped Peter Navarro, who completed a prison sentence earlier this year after being convicted for contempt of Congress, for an advisory post at the White House.

Trump also announced his intention to nominate Charles Kushner — despite his own criminal past — to serve as the U.S. ambassador to France. As NBC News reported, the Senate has now confirmed Kushner to the post.

Seriously, folks, who’s the biggest crook here?

  1. Peter Navarro, convicted of 2 counts of contempt of Congress.
  2. Charles Kushner, pleaded guilty 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering
  3. King Donald, convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

King Donald is the hands down winner!

Navarro & Kushner are petty crooks compared to the King!!!

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/vote-senate-republicans-another-ex-con-joins-team-trump-rcna207957

MSNBC: ‘Project Esther’ exposes the reality of Trump’s agenda to fight antisemitism

Posted on by
Reply

The extreme and paranoid policy paper underscores how the right has weaponized antisemitism to serve its political and theological projects.

President Donald Trump has enacted a raft of suppressive policies ostensibly designed to combat antisemitism, such as cutting off funding to universities that he claims haven’t done enough to curb antisemitism on campus. But if you take a look at the little-known playbook that appears to have inspired many of his most aggressive moves, it becomes evident how little it has to do with ending bigotry against Jews.

The playbook is called Project Esther, a policy paper created by the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most influential right-wing think tank of the Trump era. Heritage also produced Project 2025, the extreme policy manifesto that has shaped much of Trump’s agenda. Project Esther is a kind of miniature Project 2025, offering guidance on using authoritarian tools to crush criticism of Israel across the country. Trump has used many of the extreme policies it has recommended, including deporting immigrants who express pro-Palestinian sentiment and attacking academia using public defunding.

There was some reporting on Project Esther before Trump entered the White House, although it got relatively little attention. But new reporting from The New York Times details how it came together and lays out how much Trump appears to have hewed to it. The White House didn’t respond to the Times’ query about Project Esther’s influence on its goals, and Heritage couldn’t confirm its influence, but a co-author of Project Esther told the Times he believed it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”

…

In a document that sounds plainly McCarthyist, Project Esther posits that the pro-Palestinian movement in America is “part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)” and that this network is “supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy.”

It continues: [T]he HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency.”

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-antisemitism-project-esther-heritage-palestinian-rcna207935

MSNBC: Trump admin accepts jet from Qatar, ignoring legal restrictions and bipartisan pushback

Posted on by
Reply

Team Trump’s decision to accept the Qatari “gift” doesn’t end the controversy; it starts the controversy.

The Times’ report added that the Defense Department “has not given an estimate of when the work on the Qatari plane might be done, even though Mr. Trump and the White House have made clear the president wants it soon, perhaps even by the end of the year.”

What the president “wants” is likely to prove irrelevant: NBC News recently reported that converting the luxury jet will “take years to complete.”

Indeed, it’s worth emphasizing that the administration’s decision to accept the Qatari “gift” doesn’t end the controversy; it starts the controversy.

Now that this plan is moving forward, the president and his White House team should prepare for a series of questions for which there are no easy answers. Where will Trump find the money to pay for this “free” plane? Why does he keep pretending that this “gift” isn’t for him personally, even after he’s publicly suggested otherwise? How does Trump intend to overcome the seemingly obvious fact that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause still exists, and it appears to prohibit exactly this kind of arrangement?

Why was Attorney General Pam Bondi involved in approving this process after having served as a paid registered lobbyist for Qatar? How does Trump plan to explain away his earlier condemnations of presidents accepting foreign gifts? Why is the president apparently indifferent to the fact that even many of his Republican allies have expressed opposition to this idea? Will Congress have any role in approving the transfer, as is required for such gestures of international generosity?

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-admin-accepts-jet-qatar-ignoring-legal-restrictions-bipartisan-p-rcna208306

MSNBC: Democrats grill RFK Jr. over ‘devastating’ funding cuts at fiery hearing

Posted on by
Reply

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., warned HHS’ proposed budget for 2026 would “leave America sicker and weaker.”

In her opening statement, Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, noted that under the proposed budget, NIH funds would be cut by nearly $18 billion compared with the previous fiscal year.

“That would have a devastating impact on research into lifesaving cures and treatments,” Baldwin said, warning it would set “back medical innovations by decades.”

Baldwin said that while the hearing was meant to focus on next year’s budget, the proposal provided insight into what Kennedy was doing at the agency now, in fiscal year 2025. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, HHS has cut more than 20,000 jobs and slashed billions of dollars for scientific research as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s effort to reduce the federal budget.

Baldwin questioned the secretary over the department’s withholding funds that were already appropriated by Congress, including thousands of dollars in grants for research on rare diseases, Alzheimer’s and cancer. “We’re not abandoning any lifesaving research,” Kennedy answered. “We’ve cut administrators, we’re cutting waste, we’re cutting duplicative programs.”

The senator also pressed Kennedy about the proposed cuts to NIH and asked whether the lack of funding would slow the development of treatments and cures. “We are the sickest country in the world, so that money has not been well-spent,” Kennedy replied.

Keep in mind that this is a Secretary of Health and Human Services who had brain worms, eats bush meat and road kill, and takes his grandchildren swimming in a creek polluted with raw sewage. And he’s lecturing us on health?

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/rfk-jr-contentious-congressional-hearing-funding-cuts-rcna208070