Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Mediaite: House Republican Shreds Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ as ‘Titanic’-Level ‘Debt Bomb’

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Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) broke ranks to deliver a stark warning that President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” was a time “bomb” in a scathing Titanic-inspired takedown that argued the policies will send the U.S. full speed toward a fiscal “iceberg.”

During a combative stretch of floor debate into the early hours of Thursday, House Democrats lambasted the legislation as a cynical giveaway to the ultra-wealthy that guts federal health and nutrition programs, Massie joined them in protest to offer what he called a “dose of reality.”

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people, we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality.

“This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill is a debt bomb ticking.”

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“We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg,” he warned.

House Republican Shreds Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ as ‘Titanic’-Level ‘Debt Bomb’
Massie
House Republican Shreds Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ as ‘Titanic’-Level ‘Debt Bomb’

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

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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: Trump’s pick for IRS chief gives oddly evasive answers on presidential targeting

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Billy Long wouldn’t give a direct response when asked if the president can order the Internal Revenue Service to strip someone’s tax-exempt status.

Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Internal Revenue Service refused to state that the president ordering an audit of an individual or organization, or that an organization’s tax-exempt status be removed, would be illegal.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was apoplectic over Billy Long’s evasive responses to a line of questioning related to Trump’s open desire to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status for blatantly political purposes.

At one point during his testimony, Long said: “The IRS will not, should not be politicized on my watch, or any watch.” But his inability to give a clear response to Warren’s straightforward inquiry about his interpretation of the law certainly raises doubts.

…

In a matter of years, Republicans have gone from hyping up dubious allegations that America’s tax system had been weaponized against conservatives to placating an illiberal wannabe “king” who openly wants to use that system against liberals. And Long is the living embodiment of that hypocritical turn.

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/billy-long-irs-elizabeth-warren-nonprofits-tax-exempt-trump-rcna208278

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

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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.”

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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: Judge says Trump administration violated court order with South Sudan deportation flight

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It’s the latest instance of a judge calling out the administration’s law-breaking.

A federal judge on Wednesday said the Trump administration violated a court order when it put a group of migrants on a plane to war-torn South Sudan without giving them a proper chance to challenge their removal. It’s the latest example of the administration breaking the law in carrying out Donald Trump’s agenda.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts last month had ordered the government to apply those safeguards before sending people to countries they aren’t from, or so-called third countries. Murphy said at a Wednesday hearing that the administration had “unquestionably” violated his order with Tuesday’s flight. The Biden appointee raised the possibility of contempt but didn’t make a final decision about that at the hearing.

Murphy had issued a separate order on Tuesday for the government to “maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”

… a federal appeals court judge wrote Monday, “As is becoming far too common, we are confronted again with the efforts of the Executive Branch to set aside the rule of law in pursuit of its goals.” The judge continued, “It is the duty of courts to stand as a bulwark against the political tides that seek to override constitutional protections and fundamental principles of law, even in the name of noble ends like public safety.”

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/south-sudan-trump-violated-court-order-rcna208308

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

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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

MSNBC: Kristi Noem [Bimbo #2] is making the homeland less secure

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The former governor is overseeing a vast machine dedicated to encroaching on rights that she may not even know Americans have.

Since her confirmation as secretary of homeland security in January, Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem has appeared completely over her head at her new job. Most recently, when asked to define the legal principle of “habeas corpus,” the former South Dakota governor — one of the country’s top law enforcement officials — face-planted.

It was merely the latest in a string of embarrassments that underscores that America is less safe with Noem assigned as its chief protector. Noem’s [Bimbo #2’s] department — hastily founded in a moment of fear — is charged with protecting the United States from threats both external and internal. With her focus turned almost exclusively toward executing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy at all costs, the Department of Homeland Security has become a threat to our rights and liberties — many of which Noem apparently doesn’t even know Americans possess.

… over the last few years, she has systematically recrafted herself as the perfect TV-ready simulacrum of a MAGA Cabinet member. Even though her state is nowhere near the border, as governor she glommed on to the right-wing anti-immigrant fervor. Even when Trump has been skeptical of her qualifications, as during her brief time on the shortlist to be his running mate last year, he has rewarded her loyalty to the cause.

But her most Trumpian public relations efforts since she took office have backfired. Noem has been roundly mocked for her costume choices in her interviews and for wearing full-face makeup when she has tagged along on Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The $50,000 Rolex flashing on her wrist while she posed in front of incarcerated men at a mega-prison in El Salvador smacked of callous cruelty. And the theft of her bag — along with $3,000 cash and her work badge — while she was sitting in a Washington restaurant was peak irony for a top security official.

But Noem’s [Bimbo #2’s] performance in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday underscored how truly ill-equipped she is for this moment — or, at least, for a job to keep Americans safe. While Noem [Bimbo #2] was testifying on Trump’s budget request for the upcoming year, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., questioned her about the ancient right to challenge an arrest or imprisonment:

“Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to … ,” Noem responded before she was cut off by Hassan.

“That’s incorrect,” the senator said.

Yes, Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem really is that stupid!

Opinion | Kristi Noem is making the homeland less secure
The former governor is overseeing a vast machine dedicated to encroaching on rights that she may not even know Americans have.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kristi-noem-habeas-corpus-senate-deportation-rcna208009

MSNBC: I was a farmer before I was a senator. The GOP’s megabill is a terrible deal.

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Republicans love to pay lip service to rural voters, and farmers especially. But actions speak louder than words.

So I was especially troubled to see that House GOP leadership and Republicans in the House Agriculture Committee ignored decades of tradition and did not bother to gain bipartisan support for their farm bill proposals. Why is this important? Because bipartisan legislation is typically more thoughtful, resilient and more likely to stand the test of time. Remember, Republicans aren’t right all the time and Democrats aren’t wrong all the time.  

In a press release, Rep. G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania claims his committee’s section of the House’s new reconciliation bill is “strengthening the farm safety net and delivering critical support to the farmers, workers, and communities that keep America fed.” I argue it’s a prime example of one-sided, partisan deal-making.

And Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., agrees. “Instead of working with Democrats to lower costs from President Trump’s across-the-board tariffs, House Republicans have decided to pull the rug out from under families by cutting the SNAP benefits that 42 million Americans rely on to put food on the table — all to fund a tax cut for billionaires. That’s shameful,” said Klobuchar, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

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House Republicans want to push through their reconciliation bill as quickly as possible. And they don’t seem to care whether it’s actually good for the American people. My advice would be to go back to the drawing board. Maybe then, they could actually come up with a modern proposal for the 21st century that would both help feed our nation and boost our agricultural production.

Opinion | How the GOP’s one-sided deal-making will hurt farmers — and the people they feed
Republicans love to pay lip service to rural voters, and farmers especially. But actions speak louder than words.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/farm-bill-trump-republican-house-support-jon-tester-rcna207805

MSNBC: Trump’s rhetoric about food assistance gets weird as Republicans target food stamps

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Those who trust the president’s word that Republican-imposed cuts will “give everybody much more food” are in for a dramatic surprise.

“You campaigned on lowering the price of groceries. How can you justify cutting food assistance in this [budget] bill?” the journalist asked. Trump’s response was, among other things, odd.

“Let me just tell you, the cut is going to give everybody much more food because prices are coming way down. Groceries are down,” the president replied.

It’s difficult to say with confidence exactly what he was even trying to say. If Republicans successfully cut food assistance to low-income Americans, everyone will have more food? Because grocery prices have gone down?

If I had to guess, I think Trump intended to argue that the GOP’s cuts to food assistance wouldn’t matter, because low-income families will find it easier to afford groceries because of some kind of deflationary trend the president believes is underway.

But this is bizarre on multiple levels.

Trump’s rhetoric about food assistance gets weird as Republicans target food stamps
Those who trust the president’s word that Republican-imposed cuts will “give everybody much more food” are in for a dramatic surprise.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-rhetoric-food-assistance-gets-weird-republicans-target-food-sta-rcna208213

Politico: Trump admin deportation flight to South Sudan violated court order, judge rules

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It’s the latest rebuke in an escalating clash over Trump’s deportation agenda. Several judges have now accused the administration of defying the courts.

The Trump administration “unquestionably” violated a court order when it put seven men on a deportation flight bound for South Sudan, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, suggesting that administration officials may have committed criminal contempt.

The rebuke from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy is the latest episode in an intensifying clash between the administration and the judiciary over President Donald Trump’s campaign to carry out rapid deportations while evading court oversight.

Three federal judges have now castigated the administration for circumventing, or outright defying, court orders that have sought to block or reverse aspects of Trump’s deportation agenda. And several others — including a majority of the Supreme Court — have scolded the administration for attempting to violate immigrants’ due process rights.

…

The hasty deportations fell far short of the due process requirements in Murphy’s April ruling, the judge said Wednesday.

Trump admin deportation flight to South Sudan violated court order, judge rules
It’s the latest rebuke in an escalating clash over Trump’s deportation agenda. Several judges have now accused the administration of defying the courts.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/21/trump-deportations-south-sudan-00362919