A place were I can write...

My simple blog of pictures of travel, friends, activities and the Universe we live in as we go slowly around the Sun.



May 22, 2025

Cut Covid Booster Access

FDA to Cut Covid Booster Access, Excluding In-Home Carers

By restricting vaccinations, “the FDA creates a dangerous public health gap.”

Julia Métraux

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Covid booster shots will be limited to people over 65 and those with pre-existing health conditions that would put them at higher risk of acute complications.

The FDA’s move is not surprising, given that Trump-appointed Covid contrarians Vinay Prasad, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Marty Makary, the recently confirmed FDA commissioner, have openly advocated for such restrictions since before the initial vaccine was even approved. “The FDA will approve vaccines for high-risk persons and, at the same time, demand robust, gold-standard data on persons at low risk,” the two wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine article that was published on Tuesday.

Many groups of people face new or added risks as a consequence of the FDA’s decision; notably, the agency has not signaled any intention to establish carveouts for caregivers of people who still qualify for Covid vaccines under its new rules. People who qualify for the vaccine, including disabled children, those with cancer, and aging adults, may rely on the support of caregivers to keep them healthy and help them function in day-to-day life. Even with masking and other protective measures, added immunity for people caring for those with Covid, or at risk of contracting it, is important in reducing the odds of infection and of subsequently contracting Long Covid, which 20 million people in the US have been diagnosed with.

“By restricting vaccine access to caregivers who don’t meet age or high-risk criteria,” said Jason Resendez, CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, “the FDA creates a dangerous public health gap, as unvaccinated caregivers face increased risk of contracting and transmitting Covid-19 to the older adults and seriously ill individuals who depend on their care.”

Beth Connor, who lives in North Carolina—which also enacted a mask ban in 2024—is the mother of a six-year-old with a chronic lung disease who has had a tracheostomy. Her son requires round-the-clock care, which is provided by her, her husband, and a nurse; they would not be eligible for vaccines under the FDA’s new policy.

“If one of us were to get sick, it would really impact our ability to care for our son, who is very dependent on us for meeting all of his basic needs and keeping him safe,” Connor told me.

Anna Sanders, who is based in Texas, lost her dad following a kidney transplant after one of his nurses came to work with Covid. Sanders, now assisting in care for her 71-year-old mother, is concerned that “limiting access to the vaccine will only cause more situations like this.”

Other options—like traveling to Canada to get vaccinated—are much less practical for families like Connor’s, with a child who has complex health issues. Other full-time caregivers are in the same boat.

Like Sanders, Connor is concerned that limiting who can get the Covid vaccine, and thereby lowering herd immunity, would limit what her family is able to do for and with her son.

“Once we got [the Covid vaccine] and more people getting it, it felt like we could actually go to a playground, go to a library, just things that our kid enjoys,” Connor said. “If people are not able to get it, that really impacts our ability just to be in the community.”

DOJ Fired Her

She Denied Mel Gibson a Gun—Then Trump’s DOJ Fired Her

Former US Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer describes “damaging and destructive” policies happening behind the scenes at the Justice Department.

Reveal

When Liz Oyer was appointed US pardon attorney in 2022 by President Joe Biden, she’d landed her dream job. As a longtime public defender, Oyer was now in a position to advise the president on the backlog of thousands of individuals seeking presidential clemency. But earlier this year, her dream job ended abruptly.

In March, Oyer was asked to make a recommendation to Attorney General Pam Bondi to reinstate actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, which were rescinded after a domestic violence conviction in 2011. Oyer reviewed the case and refused. Within hours, she says she was terminated. 

Last month, Oyer testified about her firing in front of Congress. She not only accused the Department of Justice of “ongoing corruption” and abuses of power, but she also said the administration tried to send armed US marshals to her home carrying a letter warning her against testifying. Oyer says it felt like “an attempt to display the power of the Department of Justice” and “make me afraid of telling the truth about the circumstances leading up to my termination.” 

In a statement, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called Oyer’s allegations about her firing erroneous and said her decision to voice those accusations is “in direct violation of her ethical duties as an attorney and is a shameful distraction from our critical mission to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation’s immigration laws, and make America safe again.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Oyer sits down with host Al Letson to discuss the details of her firing, the role of the US pardon attorney, and how an advocate and defender of January 6 insurrectionists took her place inside the Justice Department.

Messier 63


A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, Messier 63 is nearby, about 30 million light-years distant toward the loyal constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the majestic island universe is nearly 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own Milky Way. Its bright core and majestic spiral arms lend the galaxy its popular name, The Sunflower Galaxy. This exceptionally deep exposure also follows faint loops and curling star streams far into the galaxy's halo. Extending nearly 180,000 light-years from the galactic center, the star streams are likely remnants of tidally disrupted satellites of M63. Other satellite galaxies of M63 can be spotted in the remarkable wide-field image, including dwarf galaxies, which could contribute to M63's star streams in the next few billion years.

What is in it for him?????

Why Warren Davidson voted against the House GOP megabill

Davidson was one of only two Republican “no” votes.

By Nicholas Wu and Katherine Tully-McManus

Two Republicans cast votes in opposition to the House GOP megabill Thursday morning. One — Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — was expected, given his long history of criticism of Republican leaders’ approach to the legislation.

The other — Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio — was somewhat more surprising. A devout fiscal hawk, he has not been among the House Republicans most vocal in pushing for changes to the sprawling party-line bill.

The former member of the Freedom Caucus has long aligned himself with the right flank of the GOP caucus and — like Massie — had signaled he was concerned about long-term deficit spending.

Davidson was among the holdouts on the budget blueprint that set up consideration of the bill earlier this year, but he came around in support after he said he received “assurances” on cuts to discretionary spending.

But Davidson couldn’t get to yes on Thursday’s early morning vote, mainly because of what he views as a failure to enact enough cost reduction.

“While I love many things in the bill, promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending. Deficits do matter and this bill grows them now,” Davidson posted on X just after 6 a.m. Thursday. “The only Congress we can control is the one we’re in. Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan.”

Still, his opposition had flown under the radar. He sits on the Financial Services Committee, which did not have a central role in crafting the bill. Members of the Budget, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce panels had more influence over the course of the legislation.

Warren is no stranger to being a rebel, even among the iconoclasts in his own party. He was ousted from the House Freedom Caucus late last year after backing John McGuire in a primary battle against Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). He first came to prominence by winning former Speaker John Boehner’s House seat when he retired, then immediately joining the Freedom Caucus that had long plagued Boehner.

Leadership said they weren’t blindsided, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise telling reporters he wasn’t surprised by Davidson’s vote. Davidson’s fellow Hill conservatives had tried unsuccessfully to flip his vote but came to acknowledge he was dug in.

“I was talking to him but … I wasn’t going to get Massie to yes, either,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who’s close to Davidson.

“He indicated he was going to vote no for quite some time. He was locked in on a no,” added Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.).

And others who held out on the megabill signaled they might come down on Davidson’s side in the long run.

“Warren’s a principled man. And history may bear out that Warren and Thomas were the wise men in this course,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

More shit is coming.......

Musk huddles with Energy and Commerce GOP

It comes a day after the Trump ally and head of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative met with Senate Commerce Republicans.

By Ben Leonard and Anthony Adragna

Elon Musk met with House Energy and Commerce Republicans Thursday morning to discuss energy issues and artificial intelligence, according to a person with direct knowledge of the confab.

It came a day after President Donald Trump’s ally and head of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative met with Senate Republicans — many of them on the Commerce Committee — on similar issues, including bolstering competitiveness with China.

Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) has taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence — including proposing a 10-year moratorium on state and local regulation of AI models in his portion of Republicans’ domestic policy package that passed the House on Thursday morning, and honing in on ways to tackle the technology’s high level of energy use.

After the meeting, Guthrie said Musk’s conversation with lawmakers focused on the energy needs for further AI development in the U.S: “It’s a national security issue, and we’re going to fix it — and we’re going to have to find a way to work bipartisan, to do it.”

“We’re dependent on China for so many things,” he continued, adding that this dynamic “has to be the focus” for how Congress proceeds in the policy arena.

Undiscussed during the meeting, according to Guthrie, was Musk’s role in President Donald Trump’s Washington going forward — even as the billionaire tech mogul has receded from public view.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to get into that,” Guthrie said. “We would have liked to have.”

Scores of GOP committee members were present for the session, which took place mere hours after the House advanced the party’s megabill in a marathon legislative session. Guthrie joked: “I think everybody’s ready to take a nap now.”

Musk, wearing a Tesla bomber jacket, posed for pictures with members inside the committee room, but did not respond to shouted questions as he exited.

Not everyone indicated they’d learned a ton from the session with Musk.

“Just typical AI talk — how we need energy, what we’re going to need, how we’re going to get it,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.). “Kind of boring, to be honest with you.”

Testy exchange

‘I don’t work for you’: Jeffries’ broadside against GOP megabill included testy exchange

The House Democratic leader spoke for roughly 37 minutes, framing his party’s attacks on the legislation.

By Mia McCarthy and Nicholas Wu

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sketched out Democrats’ attacks on the Republican megabill before it passed early Thursday morning — and engaged in a brief testy exchange after he was admonished for his remarks.

Jeffries, who as a party leader is allowed to speak for an unlimited amount of time during debate, spoke for roughly 37 minutes starting around 5:30 a.m., calling the sprawling party-line legislation “an assault on the economy, an assault on health care, an assault on nutritional assistance, an assault on tax fairness and an assault on fiscal responsibility.”

In one fiery moment, the Republican presiding over the debate — Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas — told Jeffries to direct his comments to the chair rather than referring to Republicans as “you.”

Jeffries then suggested he was not being given the same treatment as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who had just wrapped up his own extended speech.

“You know what’s interesting? Every time I come on this floor, I can use sharp language, [Scalise] can use sharp language, you choose to admonish me,” he added. “I don’t work for you, sir. I work for the American people.”

Womack again urged him to respect House “decorum"; Jeffries shot back that he’d add 15 minutes to his remarks every time he is interrupted.

Jeffries went on to frame the attacks that Democrats plan to make over the coming 18 months as they prepare for the 2026 midterms. He focused especially on cuts to funding for safety-net programs and shared stories of people who rely on these programs from Republican districts, some of which Democrats are hoping to flip next year.

“Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt. People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down. And people will die,” he said. “That’s not hype. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not a hypothetical.”

“We’re here to say as House Democrats ... if your representatives won’t fight for you, we will,” he continued.

That rhetoric stirred an angry response from Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who called the Democratic leader “pathetic” for “fear mongering” during his speech. Van Orden, whose district has been targeted by Democrats, referred to Jeffries — who is the first Black congressional party leader — with a crude reference to Barack Obama, the first Black president.

“Pretendabama is currently lying his ass off again,” Van Orden said in a post on X. “Fear mongering with our seniors, hungry children, veterans, and all Americans who are most in need.”

Jeffries in his remarks said Democrats would have the last word at the ballot box.

“This day may very well turn out to be the day that House Republicans lost control of the United States House of Representatives,” he said. “Because the American people are paying attention. They are smarter than you think, and they know when they are being hurt, they know when their interests are not being served, and they know when they have been lied to and deceived.”

Kind of a win.......

Deadlocked Supreme Court won’t allow nation’s first public religious charter school

But the 4-4 judgement sets no precedent for officials around the country.

By Josh Gerstein and Juan Perez Jr.

The Supreme Court deadlocked Thursday on whether openly religious schools are entitled under the Constitution to receive public money through state charter-school programs.

By splitting 4-4 on the question, the justices left in place a lower-court ruling in Oklahoma denying public funding to what would have been the nation’s first religious public charter school. But the high court’s deadlock sets no precedent on the issue to guide officials in the rest of the country.

The court was short-handed because Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has ties to a clinic at Notre Dame Law School that advised the Catholic Oklahoma school, recused from the case. It’s unclear whether she would participate if the issue came before the court again in another case.

The court’s one-page judgment did not specify how individual justices voted, but it appears likely that a conservative justice sided with the court’s three liberal justices to produce the deadlock.

The diarrhea slides down the leg of congress..

House Republicans pass ‘big, beautiful bill’ after weeks of division

The sweeping measure heads to the Senate, where Republicans are expected to make changes.

By Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes

House Republicans came together to pass their domestic policy megabill early Thursday, after weeks of internal conflict and last-minute intervention from President Donald Trump.

The 215-214 vote is a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who largely kept his conference together after days of around-the-clock negotiations with holdouts. He kept his promise of passing the measure before next week’s Memorial Day recess. The bill includes a fresh round of tax cuts sought by Trump, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for the military and border security.

The vote went almost entirely along party lines. Two Republicans joined Democrats in voting no: Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, whose opposition was expected, and Warren Davidson of Ohio, a somewhat surprising defection. The chair of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, voted present. Two other Republicans missed the vote.

In a rare all-nighter for the House, GOP leaders gaveled the chamber back into session just after 11 p.m. Wednesday evening, forcing lawmakers to work through debate and procedural votes until the bill passed just before 7 a.m. Thursday morning.

“And after a long week and a long night, and countless hours of work over the past year — a lot of prayer and a lot of teamwork — my friends, it quite literally is again ‘morning in America,’” Johnson said in his final floor speech before the passage vote, in a nod to former President Ronald Reagan’s signature 1984 campaign ad.

The speaker called the bill “historic,” “nation-shaping” and “life-changing,” while claiming that it is the “most consequential legislation that any party has ever passed, certainly under a majority this thin.”

Now heading to the Senate, the bill is titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” at Trump’s suggestion.

“This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday morning. “Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson, and the House Leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”

Democrats have their own names for the measure, including “the GOP tax scam” and “one big, ugly bill.” Minority party leaders are deriding the bill by pointing to nonpartisan forecasts that it would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and cause more than 10 million people to lose health care coverage, while shifting resources away from the lowest-income households and to the wealthiest.

In a lengthy closing speech ahead of the final vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of bankrolling tax cuts for the rich with cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food assistance.

“And people will die. That’s not hype. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not a hypothetical,” Jeffries said, before a heated exchange about “decorum” with the Republican presiding over the floor.

The bill’s path to passage was smoothed by a 42-page amendment that the House Rules Committee approved after spending more than 21 hours on a markup. The package of changes was loaded with hand-tailored provisions to woo Republican holdouts.

Trump also made commitments beyond what is in the bill, including to take executive action to reduce “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid, according to fiscal hawks who came around to supporting the measure in the final hours before the vote.

Revisions include moving up the start date of Medicaid work requirements from Jan. 1, 2029, to Dec. 31, 2026, and expanding the criteria for states that could lose a portion of their federal payments if they offer coverage to undocumented people.

The eleventh-hour changes would also weaken the clean electricity investment and production tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law, a change that clean energy developers warn would make them largely unusable.

Republicans from blue states won a bigger boost to the cap on state and local tax deductions to $40,000 per household, with an income limit set at $500,000. Fiscal hawks hated the so-called SALT increase but swallowed it in exchange for the Medicaid changes.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans are expected to tear up many of the policy provisions sought by House GOP hard-liners.

Rep. Chip Roy said after the House passage vote that he will be laying out ultimatums for what the bill needs to look like when it bounces back from the Senate. The Texas Republican will oppose the measure if it is projected to increase the federal deficit over the next five years, he said, even if the price-tag balances out over a decade.

“I think the 10-year window is bullshit. So that’s why I’m still not happy with the bill,” Roy told reporters. “I’ll go ahead and draw one of my red lines.”

May 21, 2025

The stupid insane shit knows nothing of the law........

Vance says Roberts is ‘profoundly wrong’ about judiciary’s role to check executive branch

By Kit Maher

Vice President JD Vance called Chief Justice John Roberts’ comments earlier this month that the judiciary’s role is to check the executive branch a “profoundly wrong sentiment” and said the courts should be “deferential” to the president, particularly when it comes to immigration.

“I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment. That’s one half of his job, the other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch. And you cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for,” Vance told New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat on the “Interesting Times” podcast, which was taped on Monday.

Vance was responding to Roberts’ remarks at an event in Buffalo, New York, where the chief justice stressed the importance of judicial independence. “The judiciary is a coequal branch of government, separate from the others with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law, and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” Roberts said at the event.

The judiciary’s role, Roberts added, is to “decide cases but, in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive and that does require a degree of independence.”

Vance’s interview with The Times, which was taped in Rome after he attended the inaugural mass for Pope Leo XIV, also delved into the vice president’s Catholic faith and how it shapes his role as a political leader.

While Vance said he believes the administration has “an obligation to treat people humanely,” he also said it’s an “open question” how much due process is “due” to undocumented immigrants.

“I’ve obviously expressed public frustration on this, which is yes, illegal immigrants, by virtue of being in the United States, are entitled to some due process,” Vance said. “But the amount of process that is due and how you enforce those legislative standards and how you actually bring them to bear is, I think, very much an open question.”

On Friday, the Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump from moving forward with deporting a group of immigrants in northern Texas under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – a win for Venezuelans who feared they were going to be removed under the wartime authority. The administration invoked the powers earlier this year to speed deportations of alleged gang members and has cited national security concerns.

Asked about the justification for using those legal authorities to deport people, Vance conceded that “we don’t have 5 million uniform combatants.” But he pointed to thousands of migrants who he said, without evidence, “intentionally came to the United States to cause violence” to argue that courts need to be deferential to the president on what he called a “public safety” issue.

“I think that the courts need to be somewhat deferential. In fact, I think the design is that they should be extremely deferential to these questions of political judgment made by the people’s elected president of United States,” Vance said. “People under appreciate the level of public safety stress that we’re under when the president talks about how bad crime is.”

When asked how he would define success on immigration after Trump’s term, Vance also pointed to the courts.

“Success, to me, is not so much a number, though, obviously I’d love to see the gross majority of the illegal immigrants who came in under Biden deported,” Vance said. “Success, to me, is that we have established a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with and that we have the infrastructure to do that, allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country.”

Vance acknowledged he’s sometimes had to reconcile his faith with the administration’s policy decisions while going on to defend its actions on immigration.

“I understand your point and making these judgments, if you take the teachings of our faith seriously, they are hard. I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t struggled with some of this, that I haven’t thought about whether, you know, we’re doing the precisely right thing,” Vance told Douthat.

“The concern that you raise is fair, there has to be some way in which you’re asking yourself as you go about enforcing the law – even, to your point, against a very dangerous people – that you’re enforcing the law consistent with, you know, the Catholic Church’s moral dictates and so forth.”

Douthat interjected, “And American law and basic principles.”

“Most importantly, American law,” Vance said.

Asked about his disagreements on immigration with Popes Francis and Leo, Vance – who said he was wearing a tie Francis gifted him before his death – said that you have to “hold two ideas in your head at the same time” about enforcing border laws and respecting the dignity of migrants.

“I’m not saying I’m always perfect at it. But I at least try to think about, okay, there are obligations that we have to people who, in some ways, are fleeing violence or at least fleeing poverty. I also have a very sacred obligation, I think, to enforce the laws and to promote the common good of my own country, defined as the people with the legal right to be here,” Vance said.

“I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly,” he added. “And so that’s not because I hate the migrants, or I’m motivated by grievance. That’s because I’m trying to preserve something in my own country where we are a unified nation.”

CEO-led American monarchy

Trump’s reign fits Curtis Yarvin’s blueprint of a CEO-led American monarchy. What is technological fascism?

Story by Luke Munn

The plan was simple. It started by retiring all government employees by offering them incentives to leave and never return. To avoid anarchy and keep authority, the police and military would be retained.

Government funds would be seized and the money redirected to more worthwhile pursuits. Court orders pushing back against these measures as “unconstitutional” should be summarily ignored. The press should be massaged and censored as necessary. Finally, universities, scientific institutions, and NGOs should also be snapped off, their funding terminated.

These moves resemble many made (or attempted) in the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. But they were all laid out in 2012 by a single person: Curtis Yarvin.

In the past five years, Yarvin’s reactionary blueprints for governance have found powerful backers in both Silicon Valley and Washington circles.

His ideas have been taken up and repeated in various ways by Peter Thiel (PayPal), Elon Musk (X, Tesla), Alexander Karp (Palantir) and other founders, CEOs and thought-leaders within the broader tech industry. He was a guest at Trump’s Coronation Ball in January.

Perhaps most directly, vice president JD Vance has praised him by name and echoed his ideas, asserting the need for a “de-wokification programme” that “strikes at the heart of the beast”.

Yarvin’s current newsletter, Grey Room, now boasts 57,000 subscribers. “Curtis Yarvin’s Ideas Were Fringe,” cautioned a recent article, “Now They’re Coursing Through Trump’s Washington.”

Yarvin, a 51-year old computer engineer, has been publishing his thoughts on politics for close to 20 years. His original blog, launched in 2007, introduced his potent blend of “the modern engineering mentality, and the great historical legacy of antique, classical and Victorian pre-democratic thought”. Last week, The Washington Post called it “required reading for the extremely online right”.

Democracy was dead and doomed from the beginning, Yarvin argued in his blog, in quippy, Reddit-style prose. Governance should look to other mechanisms (tech) and modes (monarchism) for inspiration.

The state needs a “hard reboot,” asserted Yarvin. “Democratic elections are entirely superfluous to the mechanism of government” he argued. “A vote for democratic or republican matters a little bit,” he admitted, but “basically if the whole electoral system disappeared, Washington would go on running in exactly the same ways”.

For Yarvin, then, it is not just the government that must change – a superficial swap of parties and politicians – but something far more fundamental: the form of government. Democracy was beta tested and failed to deliver. The political operating system must be ripped out and replaced.

While elements (like the term “red pill”) travelled far beyond its pages, Yarvin’s ideas remained on the fringes until recently, with their growing popularity pushing him into the limelight. Last week he hit the headlines due to his debate at Harvard, a place that has become a “symbol of resistance to Trump”, with political theorist Danielle Allen, a democracy advocate.

Allen, who debated Yarvin to provide students with “help thinking about intellectual material”, wrote after the debate that he correctly diagnoses a problem, but not its causes or solutions:

He is right that our political institutions are failing. He is also right that their members have failed to see the depth of our governance problems and their own contributions to them through technocracy and political correctness. […] But Mr. Yarvin leads them astray with his vision of absolute monarchy and racial cleansing.

A technological republic

For Yarvin and others like him, democracy’s fatal flaw is the demos (or, people) itself. Trusting the agency and ability of citizens to govern through representation is naive, Yarvin believes. Alexander Karp, CEO of Palantir, a firm that provides military and intelligence agencies with big data “intelligence”, agrees.

“Why must we always defer to the wisdom of the crowd when it comes to allocating scarce capital in a market economy?” Karp asked in his recent bestseller, The Technological Republic.

For Yarvin, Karp, Thiel and the other elites that embrace these ideas, the people are idiots. A favourite quote (likely apocryphal) is from Churchill, stating the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

If a legacy republic was one by the people and for the people, Karp argues a technological republic will “require the rebuilding of an ownership society, a founder culture that came from tech but has the potential to reshape government”.

In this vision, the state shapeshifts into something sleeker, more successful, more like a startup: the corporation. “A government is just a corporation that owns a country,” Yarvin stresses. Musk has echoed this line: “the government is simply the largest corporation”.

But if this is true, it is a pathetic one, according to its hyper-capitalist detractors: bloated with waste, saddled with debt and slowed by regulation. The state is a dinosaur which makes incremental change and must tread with caution, bending to the needs of its constituents. Founders dictate their commands and impose their will.

Dark enlightenment

“Once the universe of democratic corruption is converted into a (freely transferable) shareholding in gov-corp the owners of the state can initiate rational corporate governance, beginning with the appointment of a CEO,” explains philosopher Nick Land.

“As with any business, the interests of the state are now precisely formalized as the maximization of long-term shareholder value.” In this model, the president becomes the CEO king; the citizen becomes the customer or user.

Land, more than any other, has provided the philosophical cachet around this movement, taking Yarvin’s quippy but fuzzy prose and formalising it into the political and philosophical formation known as neoreaction or the “Dark Enlightenment”, with a sprawling 2014 essay that moves from the death of the west to racial terror, the limits of freedom and the next stage of human evolution.

Land, variously regarded as a cybernetic prophet or scientific racist, has long held anti-humanist and anti-democratic views. “Voice”, or representation – the key tenet of liberal democracy – has been tried and failed, Land argues. The only viable alternative is “exit”: flight from failed governance altogether, into a post-political and post-human future.

To simplify drastically: democracy’s naive belief in equality for all – propped up and policed by the array of humanitarian organisations, government agencies and woke culture warriors that Yarvin sneeringly dubs “The Cathedral” – has held capitalism back from its true potential.

Technological fascism

For Land, Yarvin and others, optimal rule would be both hypercapitalist and hyperconservative: a hybrid political order I’ve begun to research and conceptualise as technological fascism.

Technological fascism gazes to the future and past for inspiration. It couples, in the words of writer Jacob Siegel:

the classic anti-modern, anti-democratic worldview of 18th-century reactionaries to a post-libertarian ethos that embraced technological capitalism as the proper means for administering society.

In this vision, the best form of governance marries reaction and information, Machiavelli and machine learning, aristocracy and artificial intelligence, authoritarianism and technosolutionism.

To revive the glorious traditions of the past, its champions believe, we must leverage the bleeding-edge innovations of tomorrow.

Governing like a monarch

This culture is already infiltrating Washington. Trump is governing like a monarch, making unilateral decisions via hundreds of executive orders, bulldozing through opposition and legislation.

Musk and his DOGE minions stress they need to “delete entire agencies”, commandeering offices and allegedly stealing data under the pretext of eliminating “waste”.

A recent study of over 500 political scientists found “the vast majority think the US is moving swiftly away from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism”.

In the vision laid out by Yarvin – and taken up more and more by a growing political vanguard – government is either a political inconvenience or a technical problem. Increasingly, the authoritarian imperative to impose absolute rule and the Silicon Valley mantra of “moving fast and breaking stuff” dovetail into a disturbing single directive.

Luke Munn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Technological fascism

Trump’s reign fits a far-right blogger's 2012 blueprint for technological fascism

Story by The Conversation

The plan was simple. It started by retiring all government employees by offering them incentives to leave and never return. To avoid anarchy and keep authority, the police and military would be retained.

Government funds would be seized and the money redirected to more worthwhile pursuits. Court orders pushing back against these measures as “unconstitutional” should be summarily ignored. The press should be massaged and censored as necessary. Finally, universities, scientific institutions, and NGOs should also be snapped off, their funding terminated.

These moves resemble many made (or attempted) in the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. But they were all laid out in 2012 by a single person: Curtis Yarvin.

In the past five years, Yarvin’s reactionary blueprints for governance have found powerful backers in both Silicon Valley and Washington circles.

His ideas have been taken up and repeated in various ways by Peter Thiel (PayPal), Elon Musk (X, Tesla), Alexander Karp (Palantir) and other founders, CEOs and thought-leaders within the broader tech industry. He was a guest at Trump’s Coronation Ball in January.

Perhaps most directly, vice president JD Vance has praised him by name and echoed his ideas, asserting the need for a “de-wokification programme” that “strikes at the heart of the beast”.

Yarvin’s current newsletter, Grey Room, now boasts 57,000 subscribers. “Curtis Yarvin’s Ideas Were Fringe,” cautioned a recent article, “Now They’re Coursing Through Trump’s Washington.”

Rebooting the state

Yarvin, a 51-year old computer engineer, has been publishing his thoughts on politics for close to 20 years. His original blog, launched in 2007, introduced his potent blend of “the modern engineering mentality, and the great historical legacy of antique, classical and Victorian pre-democratic thought”. Last week, The Washington Post called it “required reading for the extremely online right”.

Democracy was dead and doomed from the beginning, Yarvin argued in his blog, in quippy, Reddit-style prose. Governance should look to other mechanisms (tech) and modes (monarchism) for inspiration.

The state needs a “hard reboot,” asserted Yarvin. “Democratic elections are entirely superfluous to the mechanism of government” he argued. “A vote for democratic or republican matters a little bit,” he admitted, but “basically if the whole electoral system disappeared, Washington would go on running in exactly the same ways”

For Yarvin, then, it is not just the government that must change – a superficial swap of parties and politicians – but something far more fundamental: the form of government. Democracy was beta tested and failed to deliver. The political operating system must be ripped out and replaced.

While elements (like the term “red pill”) travelled far beyond its pages, Yarvin’s ideas remained on the fringes until recently, with their growing popularity pushing him into the limelight. Last week he hit the headlines due to his debate at Harvard, a place that has become a “symbol of resistance to Trump”, with political theorist Danielle Allen, a democracy advocate.

Allen, who debated Yarvin to provide students with “help thinking about intellectual material”, wrote after the debate that he correctly diagnoses a problem, but not its causes or solutions:

He is right that our political institutions are failing. He is also right that their members have failed to see the depth of our governance problems and their own contributions to them through technocracy and political correctness. […] But Mr. Yarvin leads them astray with his vision of absolute monarchy and racial cleansing.

A technological republic

For Yarvin and others like him, democracy’s fatal flaw is the demos (or, people) itself. Trusting the agency and ability of citizens to govern through representation is naive, Yarvin believes. Alexander Karp, CEO of Palantir, a firm that provides military and intelligence agencies with big data “intelligence”, agrees.

“Why must we always defer to the wisdom of the crowd when it comes to allocating scarce capital in a market economy?” Karp asked in his recent bestseller, The Technological Republic.

For Yarvin, Karp, Thiel and the other elites that embrace these ideas, the people are idiots. A favourite quote (likely apocryphal) is from Churchill, stating the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

If a legacy republic was one by the people and for the people, Karp argues a technological republic will “require the rebuilding of an ownership society, a founder culture that came from tech but has the potential to reshape government”.

In this vision, the state shapeshifts into something sleeker, more successful, more like a startup: the corporation. “A government is just a corporation that owns a country,” Yarvin stresses. Musk has echoed this line: “the government is simply the largest corporation”.

But if this is true, it is a pathetic one, according to its hyper-capitalist detractors: bloated with waste, saddled with debt and slowed by regulation. The state is a dinosaur which makes incremental change and must tread with caution, bending to the needs of its constituents. Founders dictate their commands and impose their will.

Dark enlightenment

“Once the universe of democratic corruption is converted into a (freely transferable) shareholding in gov-corp the owners of the state can initiate rational corporate governance, beginning with the appointment of a CEO,” explains philosopher Nick Land.

“As with any business, the interests of the state are now precisely formalized as the maximization of long-term shareholder value.” In this model, the president becomes the CEO king; the citizen becomes the customer or user.

Land, more than any other, has provided the philosophical cachet around this movement, taking Yarvin’s quippy but fuzzy prose and formalising it into the political and philosophical formation known as neoreaction or the “Dark Enlightenment”, with a sprawling 2014 essay that moves from the death of the west to racial terror, the limits of freedom and the next stage of human evolution.

Land, variously regarded as a cybernetic prophet or scientific racist, has long held anti-humanist and anti-democratic views. “Voice”, or representation – the key tenet of liberal democracy – has been tried and failed, Land argues. The only viable alternative is “exit”: flight from failed governance altogether, into a post-political and post-human future.

To simplify drastically: democracy’s naive belief in equality for all – propped up and policed by the array of humanitarian organisations, government agencies and woke culture warriors that Yarvin sneeringly dubs “The Cathedral” – has held capitalism back from its true potential.

Technological fascism

For Land, Yarvin and others, optimal rule would be both hypercapitalist and hyperconservative: a hybrid political order I’ve begun to research and conceptualise as technological fascism.

Technological fascism gazes to the future and past for inspiration. It couples, in the words of writer Jacob Siegel:

the classic anti-modern, anti-democratic worldview of 18th-century reactionaries to a post-libertarian ethos that embraced technological capitalism as the proper means for administering society.

In this vision, the best form of governance marries reaction and information, Machiavelli and machine learning, aristocracy and artificial intelligence, authoritarianism and technosolutionism.

To revive the glorious traditions of the past, its champions believe, we must leverage the bleeding-edge innovations of tomorrow.

Governing like a monarch

This culture is already infiltrating Washington. Trump is governing like a monarch, making unilateral decisions via hundreds of executive orders, bulldozing through opposition and legislation.

Musk and his DOGE minions stress they need to “delete entire agencies”, commandeering offices and allegedly stealing data under the pretext of eliminating “waste”.

A recent study of over 500 political scientists found “the vast majority think the US is moving swiftly away from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism”.

In the vision laid out by Yarvin – and taken up more and more by a growing political vanguard – government is either a political inconvenience or a technical problem. Increasingly, the authoritarian imperative to impose absolute rule and the Silicon Valley mantra of “moving fast and breaking stuff” dovetail into a disturbing single directive.

Most gains would go to the top 10% as always....

The 10 richest Americans got $365 billion richer in the past year. Now they’re on the verge of a huge tax cut

By Matt Egan

Despite a brief market scare, the richest 10 Americans got $365 billion richer over the past year, according to a new analysis from Oxfam.

The stunning increase in wealth amounts to a gain of roughly $1 billion per day for those billionaires.

By contrast, the typical American worker made just over $50,000 in 2023. Oxfam found that it would take a staggering 726,000 years for 10 US workers at median earnings to make that much money.

The findings put an exclamation point on the nation’s wealth inequality and come as Republicans debate a costly bill that nonpartisan experts say will make the rich even richer and deeply cut nearly $1 trillion from key safety net programs.

“Billionaire wealth has increased astronomically while so many ordinary people struggle to make ends meet,” Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic and racial justice at Oxfam America, said in the report.

Elon Musk alone got $186 billion richer

To measure the gains of the richest, Oxfam measured the estimated wealth shifts of the top 10 on the Forbes Real Time Billionaire List between the end of April 2024 and the end of April 2025.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and CEO of Tesla, accounts for just over half of the total wealth gains, with his net worth spiking by $186.1 billion over that span. An analysis last fall found that Musk, a pivotal figure in President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.

The net worths of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Walmart heir Rob Walton increased by $38.7 billion apiece. Legendary investor Warren Buffett gained $34.8 billion in wealth, while Walmart heir Jim Walton gained $36.5 billion. Some billionaires such as Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin lost wealth over that span.

Oxfam argues that the Republican bill, a legislative priority of Trump, would further stack the deck against ordinary people in favor of the most affluent.

“We’re seeing a tax code being designed that would bring about the world’s first trillionaire,” Riddell said.

Some progressives have called for fighting inequality by imposing a wealth tax on ultra-millionaires and billionaires. Oxfam found that a 3% tax on wealth above $1 billion would raise $50 billion from the 10 richest Americans alone – enough to provide food assistance for one year to 22.5 million people.

Of course, taxing wealth would be very challenging, in part because it can be hard to value net worth. And some legal scholars have questioned whether a wealth tax is even constitutional.

Most gains would go to the top 10%

Lawmakers are debating whether and how to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump’s signature tax law. The bill that has advanced in the House would make permanent essentially all of the individual income tax breaks from the 2017 law and temporarily cut taxes on tips and overtime.

The legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” would increase resources to US households, on average, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). However, these gains would not be distributed evenly.

Household resources would drop by 4% in 2033 for the bottom 10% of earners, the CBO found. By contrast, the top 10% of earners would gain 2% over that span due to lower taxes.

The legislation would increase the nation’s economic output, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), by 0.5% in 10 years and 1.7% in 30 years, according to an analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Those economic gains would be fueled by higher savings and labor supply, incentivized by a weaker social safety net, Penn Wharton found.

The bill’s gains would go disproportionately to the rich, according to the analysis. The top 10% of earners would receive about two-thirds (65%) of the total value of the legislation, while households in the bottom 20% would lose about $1,035 in 2026 due to cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other changes, according to Penn Wharton.

Kent Smetters, professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told CNN that the top 10% of households would get about $3.1 trillion worth of tax cuts over 10 years. Smetters, who runs the Penn Wharton Budget Model, noted that the US tax system is “very progressive,” with the same group paying about 70% of all federal income and payroll taxes.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said the GOP bill is a “giveaway” for the rich.

“Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to jam through massive tax giveaways for the wealthiest Americans — millionaires and billionaires who are only getting richer by the day. Billionaires don’t need another break, working people do,” Warren said in a statement to CNN.

The White House, however, says Trump’s budget priorities would help Americans thrive, extending gains from his first term in office.

“Wealth inequality in the United States actually decreased for the first time in decades during President Trump’s first term thanks to his economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, domestic energy production, and tariffs,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to CNN. “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill locks many of these successful policies in, including President Trump’s historic first term tax cuts, to again restore prosperity for Main Street.”

Another expensive tax cut?

The debate comes as concerns increase over America’s $36 trillion mountain of debt.

Moody’s Ratings on Friday downgraded the perfect credit rating it held for the United States since 1917 due to concerns about the surge in government debt over the past decade and high interest payment ratios.

The White House has argued the GOP tax bill will help address these concerns by cutting spending. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that the sweeping legislation won’t add to the deficit.

However, in its downgrade decision, Moody’s said it does “not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending and deficits will result from current fiscal proposals under consideration.”

Likewise, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog group, warns that the GOP bill would “add massively to near-term deficits” by piling another $3.3 trillion on the national debt over a decade including interest. That figure surges to $5.2 trillion if temporary provisions are made permanent.

The CBO found that the legislation would an even bigger $3.8 trillion to the national debt.

“This additional near-term borrowing could stoke inflation and push up interest rates,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote in its analysis.

Yes, it is better this way...

Italy changes law on right to claim citizenship through great-grandparents

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

The Italian government has this week enacted a law that makes it impossible for anyone to get Italian citizenship through their great-grandparents, dashing the hopes of those who have already paid money to start the process.

The law, which was introduced in March by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government and came into force on Tuesday, now restricts the right to citizenship under jus sanguinis, or descendent bloodline, to people whose parents or grandparents were Italian.

According to the country’s Interior Ministry, 80 million people worldwide are of Italian descent. And for those whose great-grandparents were Italian and who have spent time and money collecting documents and getting them translated and notarized in order to claim citizenship, the change is bad news.

They will now only be able to become Italian by moving to Italy and applying based on residency — which has already become more difficult under Meloni’s government due to tighter visa rules for non-European Union citizens.

To complicate matters further, on June 8 and 9, Italians will vote in a referendum on a proposal to change Italy’s rules on citizenship by residency. At present, non-EU citizens can apply for citizenship after 10 years of legal residency.

The referendum, which is predicted to fail and which the government does not support, would halve that requirement to five years. But if it does not pass, it could be followed by another referendum, which, if passed, would increase the requirement to 12 years of legal residency.

As it stands, those applying for Italian citizenship by residency need to provide proof of taxable income for all years of residency, and must have a minimum annual income of 8,263.31 euros (around $9,360) for those without children and 11,362.05 euros ($12,870) plus an additional 516 euros ($585) per child for those with children.

Applicants must also pass an Italian language exam and prove they have no criminal convictions in every country they’ve lived in. People applying for citizenship through ancestry, on the other hand, currently do not need to pass a language exam or prove income.

For many of those who had hoped to gain citizenship through their great-grandparents, moving to Italy for 10 years (or five if the referendum passes) is not an option. Gina Pace Trucil, an American who has been working on getting citizenship, expressed her frustration on a Facebook group for people with Italian ancestors working through the new laws.

“I submitted all my documents based on my great-grandfather,” she wrote. “I wait the 3 years for my appointment, spent thousands of dollars and now they tell me I am not eligible.”

Samantha Wilson, who runs Smart Move Italy, a firm that helps people through the immigration process, called the law change terrible news.

“It is actually worse than we expected,” she told CNN. “For many of our clients, this change has shattered their immediate plans of moving to Italy, as well as their long-term aspirations.

“It’s also concerning for Italy itself, as the country is already facing a decreasing population. Many of these applicants were not only looking to connect with their heritage but were also planning to invest in property, start businesses, and contribute to the Italian economy. Now, that’s no longer possible without a visa.”

Wilson recommends that people who want to make the move explore Italy’s Digital Nomad Visa program or other visa options, according to their individual circumstances. Certain visas also mean the legal residency requirement is reduced.

For those who were in the process of applying based on their great-grandparent but are now disqualified, she suggests they challenge the law in Italy’s constitutional court.

“Of course, only a judge can file a case to the constitutional court, but we need enough cases to be brought forward for a potential ruling,” Wilson added.

“This process will likely take over a year and comes with significant legal costs. If clients have already paid for the citizenship process, we suggest they continue moving forward and defend their rights.

“Overall, it’s a very sad situation for many, and while we hope that the constitutional court will eventually rule on the matter, it’s going to take time.”

Cuts flood prevention projects....

Democrats sound alarm as Trump cuts flood prevention projects in blue states

By Annie Grayer and Ella Nilsen

The Trump administration significantly cut funding for flood prevention projects in blue states across the country while creating new water construction opportunities in red states, undoing a Biden-era budget proposal that would have allocated money more evenly, according to a data analysis prepared by Democratic staffers.

California and the state of Washington lost the most funds, with the administration cutting water construction budget for those states by a combined $606 million, according to the analysis, which was shared with CNN. Texas, meanwhile, gained $206 million.

Democrats decried the moves, saying the administration was slashing essential projects in the name of political retribution. Collectively, states with Democratic senators lost over $436 million in funding compared to what they would have received under the last proposed budget of President Joe Biden’s administration, the data analysis shows. Republican-led states gained more than $257 million, the analysis shows.

“President Trump is blatantly playing politics with critical Army Corps construction investments and punishing the American people for the way their states have voted,” House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro and fellow Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur said in a joint statement to CNN.

The Trump administration said money was allocated “based on need and urgency,” and the cuts did not universally hit Democrat-controlled states. Iowa and Louisiana, which both have Republican governors and US senators, for example, both saw their overall funding reduced.

“The FY25 Civil Works plan will generate billions of dollars in economic activity by building American energy dominance and shipping capacity while investing in important conservation projects,” an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told CNN. “The available funds were allocated by the administration based on need and urgency, in accordance with the guidelines set by Congress.”

Representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers, which implement the projects, are set to testify in front of the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. In a statement to CNN, an Army Corps spokesperson said the appropriations bill “allowed the administration to allocate all funds to Civil Works projects, programs and activities in accordance with its priorities.”

Typically, Congress takes a presidential budget request and sets funding levels for water construction projects through full-year appropriations bills on a bipartisan basis. But because Congress passed a short-term government funding bill without clear directives for these projects in March, the Trump administration has full discretion to determine how the funding should be allocated.

Biden had proposed relatively even funding levels for water construction projects across red and blue states in his budget request last year, with blue states getting about 53% of the funds available for construction projects and red states getting 47%. Both the House and Senate passed bills in 2024 that also would have provided relatively even funding for 2025. But the Trump administration’s plan allocated just 33% of funds to blue states, and 64% to red.

A source familiar with the budget said priorities often shift with a change of administration, but the change in spending on these projects was “unique” for the “magnitude” of how the funding was reallocated.

“That’s always been done on the edges; this is a wholesale dismissal of the 2025 budget,” the person said. “It looks like a war on the West Coast primarily. They definitely swiped away from blue states to fund red states.”

Four flood prevention projects in California, which were set to gain a combined $126.4 million under the Biden budget proposal, are getting nothing under the Trump administration’s plan. One of the projects to lose funding, Sacramento’s Natomas Basin is “one of the most at-risk areas in the nation for catastrophic flooding,” according to the Army Corps of Engineers website.

The West Sacramento levee project, which is not getting a proposed $43 million, bisects 48,000 residents and provides vital infrastructure to the US Postal Service, the California Department of Water Resources flood fight facility, and the Port of West Sacramento, the Army Corps of Engineers says.

The California flood control projects are key given the deluge the state has gotten from so-called atmospheric rivers, essentially, rivers in the sky that can deluge cities and towns in water. One of the California communities that was set to receive the Army Corps funding flooded during atmospheric rivers in 2023, a year where tens of trillions of gallons of water fell on the state, according to NOAA.

“Natural disasters like floods don’t discriminate – they can and do hit red and blue states alike,” Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff said in a statement to CNN. “The Trump administration is politicizing the Army Corps and its critical mission, and it needs to stop playing games with people’s lives.”

A $500 million dam project that provides flood control and water conservation in Washington also will get nothing under the Trump plan, and other state projects were given significantly less resources. The dam has flooded more than 30 times over the past 70 years causing serious damage to lands and buildings, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We are witnessing a historic and serious, politically motivated abuse of our taxpayer dollars by President Trump,” said Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, adding, “this is some corrupt B-S from the President.”

Texas got the biggest investment, with over $206 million awarded for two large waterway projects that were not part of the 2024 budget request. One will deepen the Sabine-Neches Waterway, which is crucial to military and energy transport. And the funding for the Houston Ship Channel will provide dredging and maintenance.

The other Republican-led states to gain tens of millions of new waterway construction funding include Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. A new $16.5 million in funding to address storm damage in Democratic-run New Jersey originates in GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s district.

Hill Republicans defended allocations of money to their states and districts.

“Good for Republican states,” GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, told CNN. “There is your incentive to be a Republican state.”

“Washington has picked winners and losers for a long time. It’s not going to stop picking winners and losers. Better to be on the winning side than on the losing side” Gonzales added.

When asked if he thought partisan politics overshadowed the funding breakdown, Van Drew, who worked with the administration to get the funding approved, told CNN. “Not that I know of.”

“I will say this, even when the Democrats were in control and I was here, I did very well in my district because the need for these projects are so great,” Van Drew said.

GOP Rep. Randy Weber, whose coastal Texas district is home to several key ports, said the construction awarded to his state was based on the outsized need to maintain safe shipping practices.

“We need the channel dug out,” Weber explained. “We’re able to do more commerce and more trade. So, for us, it’s a big deal.”

GOP Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, who says he has had success getting various dredging projects funded, told CNN lawmakers must make the case to convince the administration to fund these types of projects.

“You got to work on them,” Joyce said about the way to advocate with the administration. “It’s like a rebound, right? That’s where the sharp elbows get in there and make sure you get the rebound.”

Nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. But no cut for billionaires...

House GOP lawmakers are proposing nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. Here’s who could be impacted

By Tami Luhby

House Republicans are pushing to slash nearly $1 trillion from two of the nation’s bedrock safety net programs, Medicaid and food stamps, as part of their sweeping package aimed at enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda. If the legislation is approved, millions of Americans could lose access to these benefits as a result of a historic pullback in federal support.

Trump has repeatedly vowed not to touch Medicaid, while GOP lawmakers insist that their proposals would largely affect adults who could – and should, in their view – be employed. But the actual impact would likely hit a far broader range of Americans, including some of the most vulnerable people the GOP has promised repeatedly to protect, experts say. They include children, people with disabilities and senior citizens.

A sizeable share of the US population depends on these programs. More than 71 million people are enrolled in Medicaid, and roughly 42 million Americans receive food stamps, according to the federal agencies that oversee them.

Hospitals would also feel the financial fallout of the Medicaid cutbacks, which could prompt some to raise their rates for those with job-based insurance and others to close their doors.

States would have to shoulder more of the costs of operating these programs, which could force them to make some tough decisions. Among their options could be slashing enrollment, benefits and provider rates in Medicaid or pulling back on residents’ access to food stamps. They might also shift spending from other state-supported programs such as education and infrastructure or hike taxes.

In addition, grocery store owners are warning that cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as food stamps are formally known, could harm local economies and cost jobs.

“We’ve never in history experienced coverage cuts of this size, and that makes it really difficult to predict how states, providers and patients will respond,” said Alice Burns, an associate director of Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy think tank. “For the past 50 years, there have been these incremental increases in the availability and access to health care and health insurance coverage. So moving backwards and taking coverage away … This isn’t something we’ve seen before.”

What proposals actually make it to the House floor for a vote remain to be seen since conservative and moderate factions of the caucus are currently battling to make changes to the provisions – and more alterations are expected in the Senate before a final bill is enacted into law.

Changes to Medicaid

The House GOP package would reduce federal support for Medicaid by nearly $700 billion over a decade, according to an updated Congressional Budget Office analysis released on Tuesday. (CBO has yet to release a final analysis of the full legislation.)

The proposals would strip Medicaid coverage from more than 10 million people over 10 years, though some are expected to find health insurance elsewhere, such as through their jobs or the Affordable Care Act exchanges, according to an earlier CBO analysis released last week. Overall, an additional 7.6 million Americans are projected to be uninsured in 2034 because of the Medicaid provisions.

(Democrats have released a CBO analysis showing even greater potential coverage losses, but that also takes into account the Affordable Care Act provisions in the package and the expiration of the enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies at the end of this year. GOP lawmakers did not extend those more generous subsidies in this legislation.)

The package’s most consequential provision is instituting work requirements in Medicaid, a longtime GOP goal.

For the first time in Medicaid’s 60-year history, certain recipients ages 19 to 64 would be required to work at least 80 hours a month to retain their benefits. They could also meet the mandate by engaging in community service, attending school or participating in a work program. The requirement would not apply to parents, pregnant women, medically frail individuals and those with substance-abuse disorders, among others. It would take effect in 2029, though conservative lawmakers are hoping to push up the start date.

However, many people who already are working or who qualify for exemptions could wind up losing their coverage, experts say. That’s because they may get caught up in the red tape of regularly reporting their work hours or applying for an exemption.

For instance, the mandate could affect low-income people with chronic conditions that make it hard to work if they are enrolled through Medicaid expansion, not the disability pathway. These folks would have to apply for an exemption and prove they are too frail to hold a job. Caregivers and students could also get bogged down in the procedural requirements and wind up kicked out of the program.

“We expect that millions of adults will lose coverage under work requirements, including many who are working, who are looking for a job, who are unable to work because of a health condition or disability or who are meeting some other qualifying activity, but just don’t successfully report it because they just have difficulty dealing with the bureaucracy of the new work reporting system,” said Michael Karpman, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a think tank.

Hospitals and nursing homes could also take a financial hit because the legislation would limit states’ ability to levy taxes on health care providers. States often use this revenue to boost provider rates and fund health-related initiatives, among other uses.

All but one state levy at least one type of provider tax, which some Republicans claim is a scheme by states to get more federal matching funds.

Also, with more people expected to be uninsured, hospitals could see their uncompensated care costs rise. While states have typically helped cover the added expense, they may not be in a position to do so if they are receiving less federal funding for Medicaid, Burns said.

These budget strains could prompt some hospitals and nursing homes to curtail services, increase rates for other patients or, in the worst case scenario, shut down. The impact may fall even more heavily on providers in rural areas and low-income communities.

“These hospitals, which already operate on thin margins, cannot absorb such losses without reducing services or closing their doors altogether,” Bruce Siegel, CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals, a trade group for hospitals that treat many uninsured or lower-income patients, said in a statement.

The bill could also hurt those who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid, the latter of which helps cover their Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs, as well as pay for long-term care. One of the provisions would postpone the implementation of a Biden administration rule aimed at streamlining Medicaid eligibility and enrollment until 2035. Such a delay could make it harder for people to enroll in the program and renew their coverage.

Some 2.3 million people could lose their Medicaid coverage from this provision, according to a CBO estimate sent to Democratic leaders. They would include senior citizens, people with disabilities and children, in addition to adults, Burns said.

More broadly, states would have to decide how to cope with the loss of hundreds of billions of federal dollars. Medicaid is the largest single source of federal funding for state budgets, and the second largest expenditure for states, behind K-12 education.
So a reduction in federal support will be felt, especially in states that are already facing budget shortfalls. (Unlike the federal government, nearly all states must approve balanced budgets.)

How state lawmakers handle the loss will vary. They might pull back on optional benefits, such as dental care, physical therapy and home and community-based services, which help keep senior citizens and people with disabilities out of nursing homes.

One unpalatable option: If states decide to fill the gap by raising taxes, they would need to hike state levies by 4% overall, with the increases ranging from 1% in Kansas and Wyoming to 11% in Louisiana, according to KFF.

Changes to food stamps

Under the GOP package, more food stamp recipients would have to work to qualify for benefits. Currently, adults ages 18 to 54 without dependent children can only receive food stamps for three months over a 36-month period unless they work 20 hours a week or are eligible for an exemption.

The legislation would extend the work requirement to those ages 55 to 64, as well as to parents of children between the ages of 7 and 18. Plus it would curtail states’ ability to receive work requirement waivers in difficult economic times, limiting them only to counties with unemployment rates above 10%.

The bill would also require states to pay for a portion of the benefit costs – at least 5% – for the first time, starting in fiscal year 2028. States with higher payment error rates would have to shoulder more of the burden – as much as 25% of the costs for those with error rates of at least 10%. Plus, states would have to pick up 75% of the administrative costs, rather than 50%.

The work requirements could put 11 million people at risk of losing their nutrition assistance, said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance for the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That includes 4 million children who live in families that could see reduced aid if their parents no longer qualify.

And as with Medicaid, states will have to decide how to handle the federal funding loss. Some may try to limit enrollment or even exit the program since it’s not mandatory that states participate in food stamps.

“They have more incentive to want to make it harder for people to get food assistance because they’re on the hook to pay for the benefit and they’re worried about their error rate,” Cox said.

Grocery store owners are also sounding the alarm, highlighting that food stamp recipients plow their benefits back into the local economy. Food stamps funding supports about 388,000 jobs and more than $20 billion in wages, and results in more than $4.5 billion in state and federal tax revenue, according to the National Grocers Association, which represents independent grocers.

“SNAP is not just food assistance for families — it’s an economic engine that bolsters jobs on Main Street,” Stephanie Johnson, the association’s group vice president for government relations, said in a statement. “This data confirms what independent grocers see every day: SNAP dollars circulate directly through local businesses, helping to pay local wages, keep shelves stocked, and support essential services in communities nationwide.”

Never-before-seen

‘Important moment in evolution’: Fossil preserves never-before-seen flight feathers in ‘first bird’

By Mindy Weisberger

When a fossil preserves an animal’s complete body in a death pose, seeing it is observing a snapshot in time. Several such fossils exist for Archaeopteryx — the earliest known bird — and now, a remarkable specimen that was off-limits to scientists for decades is offering previously unseen evidence about the first bird’s ability to fly.

Researchers have long wondered how Archaeopteryx took to the air while most of its feathered dinosaur cousins never left the ground, and some argued that Archaeopteryx was probably more of a glider than a true flier. The first fossils of this Jurassic winged wonder were found in southern Germany more than 160 years ago and are about 150 million years old; to date just 14 fossils have been discovered. But private collectors snapped up some of these rarities, isolating the fossils from scientific study and hobbling investigations into this pivotal moment in avian evolution.

One such fossil was recently acquired by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and has provided answers to the longstanding question about flight in Archaeopteryx. Researchers published a description of the pigeon-size specimen in the journal Nature on May 14, reporting that ultraviolet (UV) light and computed tomography (CT) scans had revealed soft tissues and structures never seen before in this ancient bird. The findings included feathers indicating that Archaeopteryx could achieve powered flight.

While most Archaeopteryx fossil specimens “are incomplete and crushed,” this fossil was missing just one digit and remained unflattened by time, said lead study author Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist and associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum.

“The bones are just exquisitely preserved in 3D; you really don’t see that in all the other specimens,” O’Connor told CNN. “We also have more fossilized soft tissues associated with our specimen than we’ve seen in any other individual.”

Feathers for flight

Field Museum fossil preparators and study coauthors Akiko Shinya and Constance Van Beek worked on the specimen for more than a year. They spent hundreds of hours scanning and modeling the positions of the bones in three dimensions; chipping away shards of limestone; and using UV light to illuminate the boundaries between mineralized soft tissue and rocky matrix.

Their preparation — a process that took about 1,600 hours in all, O’Connor estimated — paid off. The researchers detected the first evidence in Archaeopteryx of a group of flight feathers called tertials, which grow along the humerus between the elbow and the body and are an important component of all powered flight in modern birds. Since the 1980s, scientists have hypothesized that Archaeopteryx had tertials due to the length of its humerus, O’Connor said. But this is the first time such feathers have been found in an Archaeopteryx fossil.

The surprises didn’t end there. Elongated scale shapes on the toe pads hinted that Archaeopteryx spent time foraging on the ground, as modern pigeons and doves do. And bones in the roof of its mouth provided clues about the evolution of a skull feature in birds called cranial kinesis, the independent movement of skull bones relative to each other. This feature gives birds more flexibility in how they use their beaks.

“It was one ‘Wow!’ after another,” O’Connor said.

The discovery of tertials in particular “is an extraordinary finding because it suggests that Archaeopteryx could indeed fly,” said Dr. Susan Chapman, an associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Clemson University in South Carolina. Chapman, who was not involved in the research, studies bird evolution using paleontology and developmental biology.

“The preparators of the Chicago Archaeopteryx did an outstanding job of preserving not just the bone structure, but also the soft tissue impressions,” Chapman told CNN in an email. “Because of their care, this near complete specimen provides never-before-understood insights into this transitional fossil from theropod dinosaurs to birds.”

However, Archaeopteryx could probably only fly for short distances, she added. Despite having tertials, it lacked certain adaptations for powered flight seen in modern birds, such as specialized flight muscles and a breastbone extension called a keel to anchor those muscles, Chapman said.

An evolutionary turning point

The museum acquired this Archaeopteryx specimen in 2022, and at the time, museum president and CEO Julian Siggers called it “the Field Museum’s most significant fossil acquisition since SUE the T. rex.”

As a link between non-avian theropod dinosaurs and the lineage that produced all modern birds, Archaeopteryx’s evolutionary importance was unquestionable. But in some ways, the museum was taking a big gamble on that particular fossil, according to O’Connor. It had been in private hands since 1990, and its condition was unknown. When it arrived at the museum, scientists weren’t sure what to expect, O’Connor said.

To say that the fossil exceeded their expectations would be an understatement.

“When I found out we were going to acquire an Archaeopteryx, I never in my wildest dreams thought that we were going to end up with such a spectacular specimen,” O’Connor said. “This is one of the most important macroevolutionary transitions in Earth’s life history, because this gives rise to the group of dinosaurs that not only survives the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, but then becomes the most diverse group of land vertebrates on our planet today. So this is a very, very important moment in evolution.”

The significance of such specimens underscores why scientific access should be prioritized over private fossil collection, Chapman added. When fossils are sold for profit and private display rather than for study, “their preparation is often poor, thus losing irreplaceable soft tissue structures,” she said. “Moreover, the value of such specimens to mankind’s understanding of evolution is lost for decades.”

The Chicago Archaeopteryx likely preserves many other important details about bird evolution, O’Connor added. With an abundance of data already collected from the fossil and analysis still underway, its full story is yet to be told.

“There’s going to be a lot more to come,” she said. “I hope that everyone finds it as exciting as I do.”

No way it passes

"No way it passes today": House Freedom Caucus chair pours doubt on future of budget bill

From CNN's Riane Lumer

The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, cast doubt on the future of the bill aimed at delivering on President Donald Trump’s agenda today, saying the legislation “actually got worse overnight” as negotiations continue on Capitol Hill.

Harris told Newsmax in an interview that he doesn’t believe the legislation will pass today, despite House Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts. Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of Republican votes, as no Democrats are expected to back the effort.

“There is no way it passes today,” Harris said. “And as I’ve said all along, we may need a couple of weeks to iron everything out, but it’s not going anywhere today.”

Harris added that including the cap increase to deductions from state and local taxes — often shorthanded as SALT and a key issue for Republicans in typically blue states — is partly to blame because it “upset a lot of conservatives.”

“Conservatives are pushing for some balancing spending reductions. We actually stopped negotiating just before midnight because we actually had a deal that was then pulled off the table,” Harris said.

That deal called for an end to “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the Medicaid program, which Harris said a “majority of Americans are OK with.” But time is running out for initial efforts to move over the finish line, Harris warned.

“And when it comes to the floor, it’s going to fail,” Harris said. “Hopefully it’ll fail in a way that keeps the negotiations and the bill alive, but it’s not going anywhere today.”

Adding to the deficit

GOP hardliners warn about adding to the deficit if domestic policy bill is passed

From CNN’s Alison Main, Manu Raju and Casey Riddle

Some conservative hardliners are warning about the potential pitfalls in the domestic policy bill House Speaker Mike Johnson is looking to push to the floor tonight.

GOP Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia acknowledged that the bill would add to the deficit, but implied that it may be Republicans’ only choice to pass Trump’s agenda.

“I would love to have everything that I want, and as you know, I’m a deficit hawk, but I can’t not pass this and then expect something better to happen,” he said.

When asked about the nonpartisan analysis that said the bill could add $3.8 trillion over eight years, McCormick said, “It’s going to. Absolutely. It’s not as good as I want it to be, but if the Democrats took control of the bill, it would be bigger.”

Another GOP hardliner, Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, argued the legislation “spends more money … than the status quo” and “actually hurts the deficits,” adding it sets a bad precedent for future lawmakers.

“If they follow our example, they’ll increase spending on their watch, and they’ll promise some future Congress we’ll cut spending, and that’s how we wind up so far in debt,” Davidson said.

He said if Johnson brings the bill to the House floor tonight, as he’s said he wants to, “the bill’s gonna have problems.”

Corruption.....

For Trump, le Grift, C’est Moi

The White Tablecloth Theory of Dirty Politics applies here.

David Corn

The only time I ever worked on a political campaign, decades ago, I did opposition research on a Republican senator from New York named Alfonse D’Amato. He had a scandal-ridden background, most notably due to his proximity to a kickback scheme in Long Island in which public employees were forced to pay 1 percent of their salaries to the local GOP machine. (He denied wrongdoing.) He also was tied to a corruption scandal involving federal contracts doled out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. (He denied wrongdoing.) He also had been chummy with at least one mob-related crook—and maybe more. (He denied wrongdoing.) Add to all that, a string of other sleazy controversies.

But none of this ever stuck to D’Amato, who cultivated the reputation of a street-savvy, give-you-a-wink rogue. Through his 18 years in the US Senate, he survived various allegations and investigations and was reelected twice. He was pure Teflon. It took me a while to figure out why.

I finally got it and derived the White Tablecloth Theory of Dirty Politics. If you’re out at a nice restaurant, sitting at a table with a white tablecloth, and you spill your red wine, everyone notices. There’s a big ugly stain that’s hard to ignore. But if the tablecloth is already dirty and marred by previous wine spillage and you knock over your glass, well, one more stain doesn’t matter. It blends right in.

D’Amato had so many stains on his record that by the time I started digging and finding additional ones, it just didn’t matter. The new revelations hardly stood out; they became part of the existing mélange. This dynamic continued throughout his political career. With his image as a guy who played perhaps a bit too loose and too fast, yet another disclosure of improbity didn’t change anything.

He was nothing compared to Donald Trump. But watching the president these past few months, I kept thinking of the Tablecloth Theory. Trump has engaged in record-setting levels of corruption, as he mixes his business interests with his day job. It’s as if the presidency is a mere side hustle to his main gig of maximum personal enrichment. His trip to the Middle East this past week was more a venture of Trump, Inc. than a presidential mission. His Trump Organization is developing projects in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—the three nations on his Mideast tour—while hooking up with firms tied to these Arab governments.

His family business is also cutting lucrative crypto deals with Arab partners. As my colleague Russ Choma recently reported, Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization now, was recently in Dubai and announced that

MGX, a UAE-based investment fund, would invest $2 billion in crypto exchange Binance using a “stablecoin” created by the Trumps’ crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. The deal could net the Trump family hundreds of millions, as the transaction lends enormous credibility and liquidity to their crypto business. MGX isn’t just any UAE-based investment fund. It’s chaired by Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and brother of the Emirates’ ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Let’s not forget the Saudi investment fund that kicked in $2 billion when Jared Kushner started his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, which subsequently attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in backing also from Qatar and the UAE.

Never has a president been so financially intertwined with foreign governments. No wonder he praised Mohammed bin Salman, the murderous ruler of Saudi Arabia, as a “gentleman.” After all, he’s helping Trump and his family make millions. And, as we all know, Trump agreed last week to accept a $400 million gift airplane from Qatar. Any slice of this would have been unthinkable for an American president in the past. But not with Trump. The latest grift is just another drop on an already huge pile of grift.

Which includes the new crypto ventures he recently started, and there’s not just one. He and his family own a 60 percent stake in World Liberty Financial (WLF), which was launched in September. It manages two digital currencies: $WLF1, which is known as a “governance” token, and $USD1, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Whenever either coin is purchased, used, or transferred, WLF gets a fee. So, anyone—a foreign official, an oligarch, a crook, an overseas or domestic corporation seeking preferential treatment, an office seeker, a pardon seeker, a Trump buddy—can put moolah right into Trump’s grubby hands and curry favor with him by purchasing or using either of these coins. Best of all, these transactions can be anonymous. Ca-ching! There’s never been an easier way to bribe a president—or for a president to collect bribes.

Then there are the meme coins that both Trump and his wife, Melania, set up around the time of his inauguration: $TRUMP and $MELANIA. They, too, generate income from transaction fees. The early action on these coins brought in at least $350 million for Trump and $64 million for Melania. More recently, Trump established a contest with the prize of a White House visit for whoever buys the most amount of his pump-and-dump meme coin. Remember how the media and the right went nuts when President Bill Clinton hosted coffees at the White House for Democratic donors? Now Trump is using access to the White House as a way to line his own pockets. And his social media company is looking to go public. Even though it loses a ton of money, Trump stands to gain $3 billion from that deal.

Don’t forget that as president, Trump is in charge of regulating—or not regulating—the crypto industry, and the decisions his administration makes on this front could lead to greater riches for him and his clan.

What we’re seeing is not a conflict of interest, but a congruence of interests. Trump has merged the US government with his business. It’s a cavalcade of corruption. It’s out in the open. It’s brazen and blatant. It’s orders of magnitude shadier than the false allegations (backed by Russian disinformation) that Republicans and right-wing media and operatives have hurled at Hunter and Joe Biden.

If Al Capone were alive today, he would look at all this, smile, and say, “I’m going into politics.”

Unfortunately, no conflict-of-interest rules apply to the president. (They cover other government officials.) But would such rules slow down Trump’s unprecedent money-grab? He’s waving the blood-red tablecloth and shouting, “What are you going to do about it?” The founders’ remedy for a run-amok president was impeachment. They didn’t count on a political party becoming a personality cult committed to defending an autocrat-wannabe.

There’s simply too much sleaze for reporters to keep up with. I’ve only skimmed the surface here. And the White House wants to make it harder to cover Trump’s transgressions. When Business Insider recently ran an article headlined “Don Jr. is the new Hunter Biden,” which examined Junior’s venture capital fund and the conflicts it presents, the White House threatened to go after the publication’s owner, Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate, which also owns Politico.

For more than 100 days, Trump has been assaulting American democracy, trampling the rule of law, and running a corrupt autocratic regime. A few Democrats are trying to call attention to his greed spree—which ought to be a bigger focus of their opposition. Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Rep. Sam Liccardo of California have introduced legislation to prevent federal officials—including a president—from using their position to profit off cryptocurrency. Murphy said:

The Trump meme coin is the single most corrupt act ever committed by a president. Donald Trump is essentially posting his Venmo for any billionaire CEO or foreign oligarch to cash in some favors by secretly sending him millions of dollars. It’s almost unbelievable until you remember this president will do whatever it takes—even selling access to the White House—to make himself richer. This is not normal, and we won’t let him get away with it.

Trump has already gotten away with too much. It seems the most important lesson he learned from his first term was not to leave any money on the table. And now he doesn’t give a damn how dirty the tablecloth gets.