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🖕FUCK THE LEGACY PRESS!🖕

Last week, when Elon Musk threatened to start a new political party in retaliation over being pushed out of Trump’s inner circle, I predicted that the legacy press would be openly hostile to the idea.

My reasoning was very simple: The legacy press is extremely predictable about certain things. If it’s bad for Democrats, it’s legitimate. If it’s bad for Republicans, it’s not.

Thus, RFK Jr. was a legitimate “independent” candidate until he became a threat to Trump, then he was damaged goods. Hacked emails were a legitimate story until the emails were Trump’s, then the press rediscovered journalistic integrity. Writing headlines about American bombs being used in Gaza was very important until Trump was president, then no one wanted to talk about that anymore.

Third parties are bad for Democrats and the press LOVES them. Despite not being a serious candidate by any metric and clearly a Russian asset, the press always gives Jill Stein all the oxygen she could ever want. The press hyped up Andrew Yang long after his expiration date came and went. Remember Third Way? The legacy press had such an embarrassing crush on them, it bordered on stalking.

But here’s how the New York Fucking Times is reacting to Elon Musk’s newly announced third party:

Well, gee golly! They don’t seem to be excited about a new third party in America! That’s so weird! The legacy press is always going on and on and fucking on about “both sides” and how broken the two-party system is. Funny…you’d think the NYT would be super jazzed to have a new entry into the electoral field.

Instead, they really want Elon Musk to know all the reasons there’s just NO WAY he’ll be able to pull this off!!!

Mr. Musk boasted on Sunday that his plan to radically transform American democracy would not be difficult — suggesting he had spent little time studying state ballot-access and federal campaign-finance laws.

…

Qualifying a slate of 435 House candidates, were Mr. Musk to take his idea national, would require about three times as many petition signatures as putting a presidential candidate on the ballot in every state and could cost more than $50 million just in signature gathering, Mr. Winger said.

$50 million! Where would the world’s richest man worth over $400 billion find that kind of money?! Best to give this up right now!

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The NYT also wants Musk to know it’s a lot of work to build a political party and keep it going. Musk is notorious for losing interest in things and the people he hires will be targeted by the regime for punishment. Who’d risk it?! Better to just give up, buddy, before the grifters come calling:

That could leave Mr. Musk dependent, at least somewhat, on the mercenary types who populate the world of minor parties and ballot-access campaigns, and who may be willing to suffer reputational damage with national Republicans if the paycheck is big enough.

In recent days, cash-hungry ballot-access operatives have been conducting frenzied research and developing proposals with the hopes of getting them in front of Mr. Musk, according to one person doing just that. Some of them have begun spending inordinate amounts of time analyzing his social media posts.

It’s important to note that the Republican Party is infested with these exact mercenary types and operatives with nary a word from the deeply concerned NYT. But isn’t it nice how they’re looking out for their good buddy Elon?

Now, here’s where the Times gives the game away by explaining what their real worry is:

On his social media site, Mr. Musk has floated the idea of holding an American Party Congress this August in Austin, Texas. He suggested that he would be interested in keeping a “laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” in the 2026 midterms. And if those candidates were to win, he said, they would “caucus independently,” but “legislative discussions would be had with both parties.”

An independent caucus would be much easier to do and well within reach of a man with $400 billion. That cannot be allowed.

So why, exactly, does the NYT find this so threatening? Why aren’t they cheering one of the few people in the country with the unlimited resources needed to kick off a new party or create a caucus capable of, ahem, holding “both parties accountable?”

Again, this is not complicated and I touched on this last week. Musk is not creating a centrist party. He is incapable of creating one. Elon Musk with his very-well documented history of white nationalism and hate speech and tongue-fucking Nazis on Twitter can no more create a centrist party than I could fly over to South Korea and become the lead singer of BTS.

Putting aside the fact that my girls would spontaneously combust from the eternal cringe of me getting on stage, I do not speak the language. And neither does Musk. He speaks fluent hate and rage. He does not speak fluent moderate. So how is he going to attract moderate voters, especially from the left?

Short answer: He can’t.

Long answer: He abso-fucking-lutely can’t. He can, however, attract Republican voters who really REALLY hate Trump. There are a lot of them and that number is growing. These are people who will never vote for a baby-killing godless pedophile liberal but they’re mad at Trump’s warmongering and tax cuts for billionaires and cuts to Medicaid and breaking Social Security and and and. They’re also conditioned to follow wealth and power. Musk has both.

Musk can easily “laser-focus” on a handful of seats. He won’t make any headway flipping blue seats but claiming several red ones? He can do that with his pocket change. What are Republicans going to do? Complain that he bought the elections? Citizens United, sweetie! Money is free speech. It’s what you wanted!

Maybe they could insist that Musk is bribing elected officials? Oh wait! Bribery is legal now, thanks to the Republicans on the Supreme Court!

And this is clearly what is freaking the NYT out. Musk can very easily take control of a chunk of the GOP and bring everything they try to do to a screeching halt. Now, that’s fine when Republicans obstruct Democrats. It will not be acceptable when Musk interferes with the GOP’s next round of tax cuts and funding to ICE.

Worse, if Musk does seize control of a caucus, he’ll control it long after Trump is gone. The GOP was not very kind to Musk when he was exiled. Don’t you think he’ll remember that and continue to seek retribution? Malignant narcissists are not known to be very forgiving.

Again, this will impact the GOP and the GOP only. Musk is not going to scoop up any blue seats, only red. Thus, the New York Times views this correctly as a threat to one party and one party only. And in the eyes of the deeply compromised NYT, the wrong party is under attack. Splitting the GOP risks leaving the field open for the left and, well, fuck that noise. What if Democrats nominate someone like Zohran Mamdani for president?! The Times editorial board is already setting its own ethics on fire in a desperate bid to stop such a “dangerous radical” from becoming mayor. Can you imagine what they would do to stop one from becoming president?

Keep an eye on this. Should Musk move forward, with either building a caucus or an entire party, watch for the reaction from the NYT and the press that follows its lead. They’re already nervous and it’s going to get ugly as they fly into a full-fledged panic. Watch them and you’ll see exactly whose side they’re on. Hint: Not America’s. Not democracy. Not the rule of law.

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🔥Burn Fascism To The Ground!🔥

Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 118 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?

Last week, as Republicans yucked it up over their MAGA Murder Budget that will result in tens of thousands of Americans dying from lack of healthcare and homelessness and malnutrition and and and, they were also slapping themselves on the back over opening a concentration camp on American soil.

They gave it a cutesy little nickname. They blasted it all over the news and social media. They’re selling merch. It’s the most obvious propaganda campaign imaginable to normalize something we burned half of Europe to the ground to stop: A literal concentration camp meant for mass murder.

Fascism thrives on fear. It wilts under scrutiny. Never look away. Never stop fighting. Hold them accountable and make them pay for every cruel thing they do. It’s the only way we get through this. Support this newsletter for just $5 a month or $50 a year and we’ll get through together.

👊Punch Nazis👊

How do we know this is what the regime is planning? Professional monster Laura Loomer jumped the gun and skipped ahead a few steps in the PR strategy:

Hahahaha! It’s just jokes, though, right? That’s just Loomer being Loomer! She’s cray-cray! Ignore her! Lulz! Why are you libtards always so uptight? It’s just a joke!

It’s always “just a joke” with the right, though, isn’t it? It’s always “locker room talk” and “boys will be boys.” Republicans never mean what they say! It’s just rhetoric! It’s just “jokes.” But then they do exactly what they said they were going to do and everyone is shocked SHOCKED that they weren’t kidding at all.

Because it’s never “just a joke.” Especially when it comes to genocide.

There’s a panel from an X-Men comic, “Years of Future Past,” set in a dystopian alternate future. There, who is allowed to have children is strictly controlled in order to weed out “undesirables.” In this panel, the character Colossus explains to two teens how it always begins with “a joke.”

The Trump regime started its purge of non-whites by claiming to target “the worst of the worst.” Murderers. Rapists. Gang members. That lasted weeks if not days.

Then they started to arrest “anti-Semites” who threatened “national security” by “supporting terrorism.” Curiously, in this context that appears to have meant “protesting Israel while brown.”

The arrests quietly expanded to any undocumented migrants with even minor infractions on their record. Then none at all. Then the regime moved on to legal residents who had a criminal background of any kind. Drunk driving 30 years ago was a sufficient excuse.

Now the regime is seeking to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship. First it will be people who engaged in fraud to become a citizen. But within months, or probably weeks, the regime will be trying to strip citizenship from any naturalized citizen for crimes they committed after becoming an American.

Because, you see, the regime does not see them as “real” Americans. And once that becomes a perfectly routine thing to do, why not strip citizenship from people born here if they’re a “danger to national security?”

And who will qualify as a “danger?” Exactly as Colossus says: Whoever they want.

• The sick because they drain our resources

• The homeless because they spread disease

• The mentally ill because they’re “dangerous”

• The handicapped and autistic because they can’t “pay taxes”
  

• Democrats because they’re “anti-American”

• Activists because they’re “terrorists

• Intellectuals because they “spread lies”

• Homosexuals because they’re “pedophiles”

• Journalists

• Muslims

• Native Americans - The right has always hated Native Americans

• Chinese

• Of course, Jews. Always the Jews.

Loomer was “just joking” but she told us what the right wants. They want a white America. They want an America purged of all of the things Fox News tells them to hate. And that’s all of us. That’s more than half of the nation and you cannot “deport” that many people. The only way to remove them is through mass extermination.

That’s what Loomer is talking about. That’s what the concentration camps are for. That’s what they are planning.

Here’s a handy chart explaining the ten stages of genocide with an additional helpful bit inserted to highlight where we are. I’m sure you’ll figure out which part I added:

The jokes to normalize the mass murders have started. It’s really important to understand this for what it is. These jokes are meant to introduce the idea and condition us to it. Then normalize it, then make opposing it abnormal. At that point, it would be “rude” to speak out.

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Pay attention to who scolds us the loudest for raking the regime over the coals for “jokes” like this. Those will be the same people denying it ever happened a decade from now. Smile at them, tell them to fuck off, and put them in the column with the other collaborators. This is the time to make everyone profoundly uncomfortable about what is happening. The harder people work to “get back to normal,” the louder we have to be to disrupt that.

No one gets to say “I didn’t know.”

Now, here’s the important bit: Document everything. If you find out what company is supplying the concentration camps, document it. If you find out the name of a guard, document it. If find out that Google Earth is deleting pictures of the mass graves, document it. Document everything.

When the regime falls, and it WILL fall, every single person who helped the coming atrocities occur will be held accountable. The rapes, the murders, the illegal medical experiments, the child trafficking, the mass executions, all of it. The legacy press will spill more ink than the regime will spill blood to make it all go away. They are as allergic to accountability for racist white men as incels are to taking a shower and not asking women online to send naked pictures.

That cannot be allowed. They all have to be arrested, tried, and then enjoy their last meal before swinging from the gallows for what they’ve done. Live the Nazi life, die a Nazi death. This has not been a controversial idea in America for over 80 years, don’t fucking tell me I’m suddenly an extremist because the GOP has embraced genocide and fascism. We execute mass murderers and smile while we do it. It’s an American tradition I’ll be proud to uphold.

Do is it sound like I’m fucking joking to you?

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☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 119 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

I challenge you to go back through your memory of the last five months when coverage of the DOGE cuts to government departments and programs and coverage of the Big Bullshit Bill were in the headlines and see if you can recall the word “consequences.”

I can’t. There was a lot of reporting about 600 people laid off here, a thousand laid off there, and the word “probationary” came up a lot as the Trump administration used it to explain away the people whose jobs were cut. But there wasn’t much debate about the bill in either the House or the Senate. In fact, one story I read last week was about how the nearly 1,000-page monster was pushed through with few committee hearings and little testimony about what was in the bill.

I think I remember reading one story about cuts to the FAA budget around the time of all the delays and cancelled flights at Newark Airport. But the coverage of cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) was focused almost entirely on the number of proposed staff cuts and the “savings” they would produce. The budget cuts sometimes showed in tens of millions of dollars and in other reports appeared as percentages. CBS reported back in February that former NOAA officials said that “current employees had been told to expect budget cuts of 30% and a 50% reduction in staff.”

Finally, when tornados recently swept through Missouri and Tennessee and Kentucky, there were a few reports about local NWS office staffing shortages. The reports were explained away the next day by Caroline Leavitt at the White House saying that the cuts had not affected “overnight” staffing at local offices. Follow up reporting proved her statement about local NWS offices to be a lie, but reports about her lies had become so numerous that the one about the NWS just disappeared down the memory-hole with all her other lies.

The tornado that tore through Kentucky happened back in late May. It killed 19 people, according to the Louisville Courier Journal. Do you remember that number? I didn’t. I had to look it up. There was some aerial footage of the destruction in Laurel and Pulaski Counties. There were a few short bios of some of the people the tornadoes killed. One woman died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator she ran when electricity went out during the storms. Another woman was killed by “blunt force trauma,” according to her autopsy. A fireman in London, Kentucky, was found dead atop his wife after the tornado hit their home.

Tornadoes are notoriously difficult to predict. So are flash floods. The NWS puts out warnings and emergency notifications on radio and television broadcasts, and these days there are systems to send out blanket alerts by cell phone. But TV’s and radios don’t work during electrical outages, and cell phone towers are vulnerable to storms, especially tornados. So even if alerts go out, sometimes they cannot be received.

The stories about NWS staffing in Kentucky in May disappeared after the storms had passed and television news stopped putting their drones in the air and reporters went back to interviewing people about inflation and the economy.

Tonight, the Times is reporting that 80 were killed by the flash flood that ripped down the Guadalupe River and its tributaries on the 4^th of July. Forty-one people are still missing. Twenty-eight of the victims were children. Now there are new alerts for more flooding in the same areas hit by the flash flood on Friday, including Camp Mystic, the Christian camp located on the banks of the Guadalupe. Twenty-eight victims of the flood have not been identified.

There are some numbers for you. Nineteen killed by tornadoes in May. Eighty killed by a flash flood in July. Donald Trump, who signed an emergency declaration today that will provide FEMA relief to the affected areas and help to pay for the search and rescue efforts, told reporters “FEMA is something we can talk about later,” as he prepared to fly back to Washington D.C. from his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump has called for the dissolution of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has provided relief to areas hit by hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and other natural disasters since it was formed in 1978 during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Some $175 billion has been appropriated for FEMA during the last four budgets and continuing resolutions.

And now Donald Trump wants to “wean” states off FEMA and “bring it down to the state level — a little bit like education, we're moving it back to the states.”

That’s what it’s all about. Money. It’s what Trump’s disastrous DOGE adventure was all about. It’s what his Big Bullshit Bill is about, moving money from people who don’t have enough of it to people who have too much of it, and denying it in the form of health care and nutrition to people who need it.

The coverage of what the cancellation of USAID will cause has just begun. We have seen the aid losses in dollars, and now we will see it in the bodies of people who have died from AIDS and Tuberculosis and other preventable diseases, and of course starvation, just as preventable with food aid.

Watch the numbers of people killed in the Texas flooding increase over the next few days. It is hurricane season, so watch for the coverage of those storms and their body counts.

Everybody will forget the numbers in Kentucky and Texas except the families and friends of the dead. The budget “savings” from DOGE and Trump’s odious bill, now signed into law, will be lied away in the White House press room, and two weeks from now, nobody will remember how many died in Texas, the same way nobody remembers how many died in Kentucky. It’s what happens when everything is boiled down to money.

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Impressionism is more than a movement—it’s a vivid lens into the world as it was seen by a bold group of painters who dared to defy convention. In the late 19th century, artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas broke away from the academic style of their time to capture fleeting light, everyday scenes, and the immediacy of emotion through loose, rapid brushstrokes. Their work was often dismissed early on, yet, these once-controversial paintings now hang in prestigious museums and cherished private collections worldwide.

More Than Just Technique

What makes impressionist masterpieces so deeply compelling isn’t just their distinctive technique or vibrant palettes. It’s the story each canvas tells—of its creator, of the moment it was painted, and of those who have cared for it since. For example, Monet’s series of haystacks and water lilies might appear serene, but behind each brushstroke lies years of exploration into how light transforms a subject throughout the day. These pieces are not only visual records but also personal reflections of the artists’ inner lives and philosophies.

Everyday Moments Immortalized

Take, for instance, Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. It’s not just a snapshot of leisure on a sunny afternoon—it’s a window into Parisian life, friendships, and the fusion of movement and color. The people depicted were real, the setting was authentic, and the atmosphere was spontaneous. Through such works, we get more than art; we gain an emotional passport to another time.

A Link to the Past

While museums offer a chance to view many of these wonders, private ownership holds a different allure. Some collectors seek out original impressionist paintings for sale not for profit, but because of the deeply personal connection these artworks inspire. To live alongside a painting that once sat in the studio of an icon is to share in its history—a history layered with brushwork, provenance, and preservation.

The Secret Lives of Masterpieces

What’s often overlooked is how these masterpieces traveled through time. Some pieces were hidden during wars, passed down through generations, or discovered unexpectedly in attics and estate sales. Their survival is a testament to the enduring power of art to move, provoke, and endure through uncertainty. Each canvas carries whispers of its journey—who bought it first, where it hung, and how it shaped the lives of those who encountered it.

Emotion on the Canvas

Moreover, many Impressionist works reflect not only what the artist saw, but how they felt. The movement’s essence lies in emotion and perception. Degas’s dancers, for example, reveal both grace and fatigue. Morisot’s domestic scenes speak volumes about femininity and quiet strength. Each artist brought a singular perspective, and their techniques evolved uniquely over time.

A Legacy That Lives On

Exploring the stories behind impressionist masterpieces invites us into a deeper appreciation—not only for the art itself but for the human narratives interwoven with every brushstroke. These aren’t just paintings; they are echoes of the past, still speaking to us in tones of light, motion, and memory.

Photo at top via Pexels

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The post A Brush With History: The Stories Behind Impressionist Masterpieces appeared first on DCReport.org.

The outlines for Donald Trump’s attack on health care for several million Americans are clear, but it will take some time for the practical effects to kick in.

What all parties except Trump see is that the effects of the “big, beautiful bill” will be to remove upwards of 12 million from Medicaid eligibility through budget cuts, restrictions on states and lots of new paperwork both for individuals and officials.

Indeed, The Hill.com noted that while Trump’s bill was never framed directly as a health remake, it dramatically will upend health care in America. The bill’s provisions will impact patients, doctors, hospitals, and insurers, as Republicans partially paid for it by cutting more than $1 trillion from federal health programs

As Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy for KFF.org, which tracks health care issues, noted last week in an op-ed, the changes forced by the bill also will make enrollment in Affordable Care Act/Obamacare health plans more difficult, technical rules will affect some Medicare payments, and rural hospitals across the country will find themselves under increased financial pressures, forcing many to close. He argues that in all, the new law and changes could lead to a staggering 17 million more people uninsured to the 25 million already not covered.

In addition, the bill basically tells Planned Parenthood to either give up offering abortions in states where they are legal or face shutdown by declaring that organization off-limits for reimbursements for non-abortion treatments at 200 clinics serving 2 million patients.

Trump, of course, continues to insist that he and Republicans have not cut any health benefits, just cut “waste and fraud,” a laughable assertion.  Apart from all else, Trump has dismissed 80,000 Veterans’ Affairs employees who handle health and services.
The Trump government is taking a broad swipe at medical services — all towards paying off (and falling well short) of the cost of tax cuts that largely will benefit the wealthiest in our country. The questions: what do we have to do practically and when?

Targeting Medicaid Eligibility

At heart, Trump’s approach, now rubber-stamped solely by House and Senate Republican majorities and the tiniest wins, is to target eligibility for Medicaid, a program serving 70 million. Trump repeatedly says that able-bodied adults slipping through the system are responsible for the hundreds of billions of dollars cut for fraud. Trump and Republicans in Congress also insist that undocumented immigrants — barred from receiving these benefits by law — are somehow responsible.

As an aside, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) say the prime target of fraud are extra fees and upgrading of reported disease treatments by for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers, who are not targeted in this bill.

Under the new law, beginning in December, 2026, states are required to collect and review paperwork every six months for everyone aged 19-64 to determine that they are working 80 hours a month or meet certain exemption statuses like pregnancy or disability, people in prison or rehabilitation — but individuals are now required to prove their disability or frailty or show efforts at finding work or volunteer commitments.  To be eligible, income must be below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (roughly $42,760 for a family of four) who gained insurance when their states expanded Medicaid.

You can find detailed views of the requirements at KFF.

According to CMS, at least 65% of Medicaid applicants are employed, just paid below poverty standards. Of the remainder, there are whole groups who are disabled, pregnant, children, or seniors, including overlap with Medicare, vastly reducing the number of able-bodied men whom Trump and Republicans ridicule as sitting in basements playing video games.

But states are required to maintain databases on addresses, and the feds must create a system to prevent enrollment in more than one state as well as a master database on all deaths. Of course, these same agencies are losing budget for staff or federal support, so who exactly is going to handle this paperwork or enforce it is not clear.

Individuals applying for coverage must meet requirements for one or more months preceding the month of application. If a person is denied or disenrolled because of work requirements, they are also considered ineligible for subsidized Obamacare coverage.

If tax forms give you a headache, you can imagine this will too.

In Georgia, the only state with a Medicaid work mandate, ProPublica reports that the state has enrolled just a fraction of those eligible, largely because of bureaucratic hurdles in the verification system. As of May, two years in, about 7,500 of the nearly 250,000 eligible Georgians were enrolled, even though state statistics show 64% of that group is working.

Arkansas gave up on enforcing work requirements after seeing that red tape associated with verifying eligibility resulted in more than 18,000 people losing coverage within the first few months of the policy. A federal judge halted the program in 2019, ruling that it increased the state’s uninsured rate without any evidence of increased employment.

These systems mean filing the correct forms and documentation in the correct order every six months. Failing to do so correctly opens the possibility of a person losing coverage mid-year. The bill will also require people with incomes above the poverty line to pay out-of-pocket copays for most Medicaid services, like lab tests or doctor visits.

Impacting Health Services

The legislation will make it more difficult for people to sign up for and afford health plans on Obamacare exchanges. It limits eligibility for premium subsidies to people not eligible for any other federal insurance program and bars most immigrants and lawful permanent residents from receiving subsidies.

It requires immediate verification for eligibility, limits some special enrollment periods and ends automatic reenrollment ahead of the 2028 sign-up period, meaning enrollees will need to update their income, immigration status and other information each year. According to KFF, 10 million people were automatically reenrolled in ACA plans in 2025.

The new law will threaten rural hospitals who are required by law to provide services but who could face difficulty being reimbursed.  Hospital closings would mean longer drives for rural patients and, inevitably, more deaths in emergency situations. The bill and promises from Trump will provide some money towards hospital in trouble, but not nearly enough to cover the estimated losses for hospitals expected to see a spike in emergency room usage.

Bottom line is that Trump’s sole domestic policies act is unpopular  (see the KFF poll from last month), likely will not reduce targeted “fraud,” will hit at rural areas friendly to MAGA and veterans, and will result in a sicker, untreated nation.

Together with efforts at the Department of Health and Human Services to delegitimize vaccines and to cancel medical research, to replace independent medical experts with political loyalists, to overrule the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with bromides against measles rather than treatments, we’re beginning to see the full outline of Trump’s oft-promised health programs. It’s anything but Making America Healthy Again.

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An impressive series, some true, mostly not, and how to state that

It can seem like Trump is having a lot of successes lately. Some who may not be fans might nevertheless be impressed by these successes. Knowing how to respond, both honestly and accurately, to people with that impression is important.

Trump does deserve some credit, which will be defined, but for those who follow the news carefully we know that almost every success is really crap under the hood. There’s no need to dig into a lot of that but to give one example, the bill he got through Congress includes work requirements for Medicaid. Some people will like that requirement, and at a very superficial level it makes sense, but we know from states that have required that in the past what it mostly does is lead to a lot of people losing coverage who are low-income working people who should qualify but get snagged in the red tape. Something that could seem good on the surface turns out to be damaging to the country.

For fans, though, or for those with only a superficial awareness, the picture would look very different. Wow, he bombed Iran and gave them “what for” for trying to build nukes. Sneaking across the border is way, way down. He got that big bill passed that has some nice tax breaks, like no tax on tips, and has some savings like work requirements for Medicaid. The Supreme Court has agreed with him on a number of things like ending Birthright Citizenship and sending immigrant criminals to tough prisons in smaller countries. He got NATO to cave on spending more on their own defense. This guy is making things happen!

Yes, he is making things happen, and that’s part of where he deserves credit, but of course most of the above items have a different or darker side to them. The Supreme Court wins are equivocal. Iran was an act of war on a country that wasn’t warring on us, and will likely create terrible international messes in the future. Et cetera. So most of the successes are the appearance of success. That’s a lesson progressives could note. Creating the appearance of success can be bad if deceptive, but it can also be a useful tool if used in a productive way to create momentum for real success on positive goals.

More broadly he is showing that bold leadership can accomplish a lot. Of course it’s harder when you’re sticking closer to the rules, unlike say firing all the FBI leadership you don’t like and replacing them with inexperienced loyalists so it can become your tool to harass opponents, but still, Democrats could have accomplished much more in years past with more of this boldness, and then maybe people wouldn’t be so frustrated as to vote for an insurrectionist. Even mild amounts of breaking the rules, and then let the system push back, but you’ve made your point, can be good.

Trump has succeeded at a couple of things. Undocumented immigration is way down. Of course it was accomplished by an inhumane way of going at it, but clearly it could have been reduced before with more humane methods. We need immigrants, but it would be good to have that happen in a more planned and coordinated way as far as possible. (There’s also a lot of history of GOP obstruction but too much to cover here.) NATO, though, is a mostly clean success, getting the partners to agree to spend more. It was needed and he got that done.

But for anyone you know who is a fence-sitter impressed with successes, really, almost all are not. They are hollow (Supreme Court has yet to truly decide on birthright citizenship), or negative (the big bill is going to damage the lower half, help the topmost, and rack up debt), or false (groceries have not generally gone down) or for show (rounding up non-criminal, hard-working immigrants and shipping them to distant harsh prisons). At the same time, acknowledge the true successes. Also that Democrats have long needed a positive version of such boldness. Something like a modern FDR. Nothing else has gotten that message through the thick heads of the leadership. If we’re lucky, perhaps before long that will happen, and the message will have come from the destructive actions of one with careless boldness.

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