Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Something to Know - 2 July

There is a very exciting and attention grabbing event going on in Washington D.C.   It looks and sounds like melodrama, or a tragic comedy, or a horror movie.  Depending on your point of view, this is the single-most Big Beautiful Bomb that has ever occurred under the dome of the Legislative branch.   The revised monster now goes back to the House where the drama will be either finalized or manhandled into a bill that has to be resent back to the Senate for approval.   This could evolve into a ping-pong match.   I'm not calling the shots on this game, but will there be enough public pushback to counter the avalanche of money that pours in from the rich to defeat the poor.  Nice to know that Musk says that he will primary every Republican who is running for office.   So, grab your munchies and watch the battle.   So what is Trump doing in the meantime?....well he is grifting and hawking a new line of fragrances.   The whole thing STINKS!  The story line for screenwriters are just begging for a movie to be made on all of this. 


Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American heathercoxrichardson@substack.com 

Jul 1, 2025, 11:33 PM (8 hours ago)
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Just after noon today, the Senate passed its version of the budget reconciliation bill. All Democrats and Independents voted no. Three Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—joined the Democrats in voting no. That left the bill at 50–50. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the deciding vote, pushing the measure through the Senate and sending it back to the House to vote on the changes made by the Senate.

From the reporters' gallery above the floor, CNN's Sarah Ferris heard Senator Angus King (I-ME) yell to his Republican colleagues: "Shame on you guys. That was the most disgusting vote I've ever seen in my life."

The measure cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations and offsets those cuts in part by slashing Medicaid and food security programs for low-income Americans.

But there is at least one aspect of American life on which the bill is lavishing money. While the measure slashes public welfare programs, it pours $170.7 billion into immigration enforcement. The American Immigration Council broke out the numbers today: The Senate bill provides $51.6 billion to build a wall on the border, more than three times what Trump spent on the wall in his first term. It provides $45 billion for detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an increase of 265% in ICE's annual detention budget. It provides $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement, a threefold increase in ICE's annual budget.

When Trump talks about undocumented migrants as being dangerous criminals, he appears to have bought into the fantasy that the U.S. is a hellscape. In fact, about 8% of arrested migrants have been convicted of violent crimes. The administration defines anyone who breaks immigration law—which is a misdemeanor, not a felony—as a criminal. One of the reasons for the push to get the bill passed before July 4 is that the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the bill's additional funding to operate.

While the Senate considered the budget reconciliation bill today, President Donald J. Trump visited the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants. The facility will cost $450 million a year, which will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Florida attorney general who came up with the plan gave it the name "Alligator Alcatraz," a cutesy name for tents filled with cages for undocumented immigrants.

Standing in front of the cages with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem laughing, Trump told reporters: "Biden wanted me in here…. It didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here, that son of a bitch."

This is nonsense, but it reveals Trump's conviction that he is always a victim, his determination to destroy the rule of law that threatened to hold him accountable for his actions, and his own drive to imprison and destroy his political opponents.

It was exactly a year ago today, on July 1, 2024, that the United States Supreme Court decided Donald J. Trump v. United States. The court's majority overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.

It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take "bold and unhesitating action" and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president ever asserted that he was above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts's decision didn't focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.

The Supreme Court had delayed issuing its decision in that case until the last possible moment, guaranteeing that Trump would not face trial in the two federal criminal cases pending against him, one charging him with willfully retaining national defense information by taking classified information with him when he left office, and the other for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A year later, today provided a snapshot of what happens to a democracy when a president feels he can disregard the law.

Trump's Education Department announced today it is withholding $6.8 billion in funding for K–12 schools that, by law, was supposed to be disbursed starting today. By law, the executive branch must disburse appropriations Congress has passed, but Trump and his officers have simply ignored the law, saying they believe it is unconstitutional. The Constitution provides that Congress alone has the power to write laws and charges the president with taking "Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Yesterday, Trump announced new Trump fragrances, perfumes and colognes for which he has licensed the use of his name. They retail for hundreds of dollars per 3.3 ounce bottle. Today, Zach Everson of Forbes reported that Trump Media & Technology Group is testing an international rollout of its streaming platform. The chief executive officer of Trump Media, former Republican congress member Devin Nunes, said in a statement: "International viewers who want to get the other side of the story will soon have an easy opportunity to do so."

Everson points out that Trump has slashed Voice of America, the largest international broadcaster in the U.S., raising questions about whether Trump's business interests played a role in his decisions about the congressionally funded U.S. news source.

But it was at a press conference in Ochopee, Florida, today that Trump showed just how profoundly the immunity conferred on him a year ago is undermining democracy.

Trump continues to say he will arrest and deport U.S. citizens to third countries. On April 14, a microphone picked up Trump's comment to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador that "homegrowns are next" after the undocumented immigrants Bukele was imprisoning for Trump. Today, Trump told reporters that "bad criminals" have migrated to the U.S., "but we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. People that whacked people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and kill them, people that knife you when you're walking down the street. They're not new to our country. They're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too. You want to know the truth? So maybe that'll be the next job that we'll work on together."

He is also continuing to push the idea of attacking his political opponents. Today, Trump called for an investigation into Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary under President Joe Biden. He also threatened to arrest the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, if he doesn't work with ICE agents to arrest migrants, although local and state governments have no legal obligation to work with federal immigration enforcement. Trump claimed—incorrectly—that Mamdani is a communist, and said that "a lot of people are saying he's here illegally." In fact, Mamdani is a naturalized citizen.

Today Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman of the New York Times reported that a former FBI agent, Jared Wise, who was charged with telling the January 6, 2021, rioters storming the Capitol to kill police officers, is working with the task force in the Justice Department set up as a way for President Trump to seek retribution against his political enemies.

Once a new system of detention facilities and ICE agents is established and the idea that a Republican president can legitimately attack his political opponents is accepted, a police state will be in place.

In answer to the question "How many more facilities like this do you feel that the country needs in order to enact your agenda of mass deportations?" Trump said today: "Well, I think we'd like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know Ron's doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you're going to keep it for a long time."

Once that system is in place, it will not matter if Trump is able to do the work of the presidency. Today, a reporter from the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the new detention facility in the Everglades: "Mr. President, is there an expected time frame that detainees will spend here? Days, weeks, months?"

Trump answered: "In Florida? I'm going to spend a lot. Look, this is my home state. I love it, I love your government, I love all the people around. These are all friends of mine. They know very well. I mean, I'm not surprised that they do so well. They're great people. Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in the state. I'll spend a lot of time here. I want to, you know, for four years, I've got to be in Washington, and I'm okay with it because I love the White House. I even fixed up the little Oval Office, I make it—it's like a diamond, it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. It wasn't maintained properly, I will tell you that. But even when it wasn't, it was still the Oval Office, so it meant a lot. But I'll spend as much time as I can here. You know, my vacation is generally here, because it's convenient. I live in Palm Beach. It's my home. And I have a very nice little place, nice little cottage to stay at, right? But we have a lot of fun, and I'm a big contributor to Florida, you know, pay a lot of tax, and a lot of people moved from New York, and I don't know what New York is going to do. A lot of people moved to Florida from New York, and it was for a lot of reasons, but one of them was taxes. The taxes are so high in New York, they're leaving. I don't know what New York's going to do about that, because some of the biggest, wealthiest people, and some of the people that pay the most taxes of any people anywhere in the world, for that matter, they're moving to Florida and other places. So we're going to have to help some of these states out, I think. But thank you very much. I'll be here as much as I can. Very nice question."





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Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Something to Know - 1 July

We have come down the long road of the Trump Trail to where we are right now.    Under the dome of the US Capitol, is where the legislative rubber hits the road.   In a massive 940-page Big Beautiful Bill, the concoction of slime, greed, corruption, more greed, authoritarianism, racism, more greed.....etc, add as many descriptors you want....one piece of legislation to mark the end of a great era is to be voted on.   History has shown that these events do not go down well, and are fraught with darkness and great harm for all.


Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American heathercoxrichardson@substack.com 

Jun 30, 2025, 10:49 PM (7 hours ago)
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"This is the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress," said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).

"[W]e're debating a bill that's going to cut healthcare for 16 million people. It's going to give a tax break to…massively wealthy people who don't need any more money. There are going to be kids who go hungry because of this bill. This is the biggest reduction in…nutrition benefits for kids in the history of the country." Murphy continued: "We're obviously gonna continue to offer these amendments to try to make it better. So far not a single one of our amendments…has passed, but we'll be here all day, probably all night, giving Republicans the chance over and over and over again to slim down the tax cuts for the corporations or to make life a little bit…less miserable for hungry kids or maybe don't throw as many people off of healthcare. Maybe don't close so many rural hospitals. It's gonna be a long day and a long night."

"This bill is a farce," said Senator Angus King (I-ME). "Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a table, saying, 'I've got a great idea. Let's give $32,000 worth of tax breaks to a millionaire and we'll pay for it by taking health insurance away from lower-income and middle-income people. And to top it off, how about we cut food stamps, we cut SNAP, we cut food aid to people?'... I've been in this business of public policy now for 20 years, eight years as governor, 12 years in the United States Senate. I have never seen a bill this bad. I have never seen a bill that is this irresponsible, regressive, and downright cruel."

"When I worked here in the 70's," King said, "I had insurance as a…junior staff member in this body 50 years ago. Because I had that insurance that covered a free checkup, I went in and had my first physical in eight years…and the doctors found a little mole on my back. And they took it out. And I didn't think much of it. And I went in a week later and the doctor said, 'You better sit down, Angus. That was malignant melanoma. You're going to have to have serious surgery.'… And I had the surgery and here I am. If I hadn't had insurance, I wouldn't be here. And it's always haunted me that some young man in America that same year had malignant melanoma, he didn't have insurance, he didn't get that checkup, and he died. That's wrong. It's immoral."

Senator King continued: "I don't understand the obsession and I never have…with taking health insurance away from people. I don't get it. Trying to take away the Affordable Care Act in 2017 or 2018 and now this. What's driving this? What's the cruelty to do this, to take health insurance away from people knowing that it's going to cost them…up to and including…their lives."

In fact, the drive to slash health insurance is part of the Republicans' determination to destroy the modern government.

Grover Norquist, a lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of the key architects of the Republican argument that the solution to societal ills is tax cuts, in 2010 described to Rebecca Elliott of the Harvard Crimson how he sees the role of government. "Government should enforce [the] rule of law," he said. "It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty."

Norquist vehemently opposed taxation, saying that "it's not any of the government's business who earns what, as long as they earn it legitimately," and proposed cutting government spending down to 8% of gross domestic product, or GDP, the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States.

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people's money, and business owners treated their workers as they wished. Within a year the Great Plains would be blowing away as extensive deep plowing had damaged the land, making it vulnerable to drought. Republican leaders insisted the primary solution to the crisis was individual enterprise and private charity.

When he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in July 1932, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt vowed to steer between the radical extremes of fascism and communism to deliver a "New Deal" to the American people.

The so-called alphabet soup of the New Deal gave us the regulation of banks and businesses, protections for workers, an end to child labor in factories, repair of the damage to the Great Plains, new municipal buildings and roads and airports, rural electrification, investment in artists and writers, and Social Security for workers who were injured or unemployed. Government outlays as a percentage of GDP began to rise. World War II shot them off the charts, to more than 40% of GDP, as the United States helped the world fight fascism.

That number dropped again after the war, and in 1975, federal expenditures settled in at about 20% of GDP. Except for short-term spikes after financial crises (spending shot up to 24% after the 2008 crash, for example, and to 31% during the 2020 pandemic), the spending-to-GDP ratio has remained at about that set point.

The national debt is growing because tax revenues have plummeted. Tax cuts under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations are responsible for 57% of the increase in the ratio of the debt to the economy, 90% if you exclude the emergency expenditures of the pandemic, and have left the United States with a tax burden nowhere close to the average of the 38 other nations in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), all of which are market-oriented democracies. And those cuts have gone primarily to the wealthy and corporations.

Republicans who backed those tax cuts now want more. They are trying to force through a measure that will dramatically cut the nation's social safety net while at the same time increasing the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next ten years.

"There are two ways of viewing the government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life," FDR said in his speech accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president. "The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man." The other "is based upon the simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it."

The Republicans' budget reconciliation bill takes wealth from the American people to give it to the very wealthy and corporations, and Democrats are calling their colleagues out.

"This place feels to me, today, like a crime scene," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on the floor of the Senate. "Get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten racket. This bill cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers with huge handouts to big Republican donors. It loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine. When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust."

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Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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Monday, June 30, 2025

Something to Know - 30 June


Keeping track of the BBB as it twists and turns through the legislative process, the drama of it all makes for a great story line for a movie.   However it is more serious than that.  Presently, the entire 940 pages will be read aloud by the Democrats on the floor of the Senate, as the procedures of the process are allowed to slow it down.   DJT's reaction to all the guardrails is to fire or obliterate any obstacles he encounters.   So grab your popcorn and favorite beverage and be entertained as if Watergate is being recalled.

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American heathercoxrichardson@substack.com 

Jun 29, 2025, 11:02 PM (7 hours ago)
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There are four political stories people should know about tonight.

First, President Donald Trump's tariff war and weaker consumer spending translated to a contraction of 0.5% in the U.S. economy in the first quarter, even more of a drop than the 0.2% economists expected. The economy Trump inherited from President Joe Biden led the world in productivity.

Second, John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel of the Washington Post reported today that intercepted communications showed that senior Iranian officials said the U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities caused less damage than they had expected and that they wondered why the strikes were so restrained.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also called out that at a press conference in the Netherlands last Wednesday, Trump said he had given Iran permission to bomb a U.S. air base in Qatar in retaliation for the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear weapons program sites. "They said, 'We're going to shoot them. Is one o'clock OK?' I said it's fine," Trump said. "And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn't get hurt, except for the gunners."

Marshall expressed astonishment that this admission has attracted very little attention. He suggested that, if it is true, it represents "the most shocking dereliction of duty one could imagine for the commander-in-chief," and he wondered how Republicans would have reacted if a Democratic president had said he had let "a foreign adversary fire on an American military installation."

Third, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported today that the Republicans' budget reconciliation bill makes the biggest cut ever to programs for low-income Americans. Those cuts have made many Republicans skittish about supporting the measure.

After Trump attacked him yesterday for not supporting the budget reconciliation bill, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has announced he will not run for reelection next year, indicating his unwillingness to face a primary challenger backed by Trump. This puts the seat in play for a Democratic pickup.

In a statement, Tillis said: "In Washington over the last few years, it's become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species." He wrote: "I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability."

Tonight, Tillis told the Senate: "What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore, guys?... [T]he effect of this bill is to break a promise."

Fourth, the Senate parliamentarian has told senators that several of the provisions added to the Republicans' budget reconciliation bill violate the rules for budget reconciliation bills. Those provisions include the ones added to the bill to win the support of Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Today, Trump pushed Republican senators to ignore the Senate parliamentarian, who judges whether proposed measures adhere to Senate rules. Trump posted on social media: "An unelected Senate Staffer (Parliamentarian), should not be allowed to hurt the Republicans Bill. Wants many fantastic things out. NO! DJT."

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office today said the tax cuts in the budget reconciliation bill the Republican senators are trying to pass will increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next ten years despite the $1.2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other programs over the same period. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) called the measure "Robin Hood in reverse…stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich, this massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top…. This is socialism for the rich."

Trump has demanded the measure's passage by July 4, in part because the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the supplemental funding the bill will provide. That funding adds an astonishing $45 billion for migrant detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the current budget of $3.4 billion over the next five years, and $14.4 billion for transportation and removal on top of the current annual budget of $750 million.

After Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried to slow the passage of the measure by forcing a reading of the entire 940-page bill in the Senate, senators will begin voting tomorrow on amendments in a procedure known as a "vote-a-rama" in which Democratic senators will put Republicans on the record on controversial issues.



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Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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Sunday, June 29, 2025

Something to Know - 29 June

So ....the Big Beautiful Bill passed by the House has been sent over to the Senate.  This legislative procedure is known as the methodology by which the Legislative branch of our government makes and passes laws.   In this case, the BBB is like a train wreck being sent to the back alley chop shop for review and adjustments to supposedly make it presentable to be sent back to the House for passage.  The problem is that the Senate recognized that there are many misalignments and dents and attempted to put lipstick on the pig and paint it up, lowered the axle, and extended the wheelbase...but it looks like it is coming out of the shop still looking like a train wreck.   The main registered owner, known as Trump, is using his larger than life piggy bank to instill fear in anyone who votes against it that he will primary them out of existence.   This is how the Mob Shop works, and it makes Earl Scheib look extremely ethical.   


Inbox

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American heathercoxrichardson@substack.com 

12:06 AM (9 hours ago)
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Last night just before midnight, Republicans released their new version of the omnibus budget reconciliation bill. It is a sign of just how unpopular this bill is that they released the new version just before midnight on a Friday night, a time that is the graveyard of news stories.

Over the course of today, the contours of the revised measure have become clearer. Democratic challenges and the Senate parliamentarian convinced Republican senators to remove policy provisions from the bill that either were especially incendiary or did not meet the rules for budget reconciliation bills. Those challenges preserved the Consumer Finance Protection Board, limited a rule that prevented states from regulating artificial intelligence, prevented the selling off of public lands, eliminated vouchers for religious schools, and so on.

Despite these changes, the final measure retains its original structure.

That structure tells us a lot about the world today's Republican lawmakers envision. The centerpiece of the bill remains its extension of the 2017 tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations, making those tax cuts permanent. The tax structure in the measure funnels wealth from the poorest Americans to the top 1%.

According to Alyssa Fowers and Hannah Dormido of the Washington Post, the Senate slashed the apparent cost of the bill by using a new method to calculate the numbers. Under the traditional way of estimating the cost of a bill, the new measure would add $4.2 trillion to the national debt. But using the gimmick of ignoring the tax extensions by saying they are simply a continuation of policies already in place, the Senate claims the bill will cost $442 billion, just a tenth of what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates.

According to immigration scholar Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the measure also provides an additional $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion. It adds $14.4 billion for transportation and removal on top of the current annual budget of $750 million. It also adds $8 billion for new ICE hires and retention. Reichlin-Melnick notes that this budget will give ICE more money for detention than it gives the entire U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The Department of Homeland Security reflected the heart of this budget today, when it posted on social media an image of four alligators wearing ICE hats—an apparent reference to the construction of a migrant detention facility in the Everglades in Florida—with the comment: "Coming soon!"

To offset some of the tax cuts in the measure, the Senate bill cuts $930 billion out of Medicaid—more than the House bill cut—and, according to Ron Wyden (D-OR), makes additional cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the measure will cause 11.8 million Americans to become uninsured, almost a million more than would have lost health insurance under the House version.

In Politico today, Meredith Lee Hill reported that "[e]very major health system in Louisiana is warning [House] Speaker Mike Johnson [R-LA] and the rest of the state's congressional delegation that the Senate [Republicans'] planned Medicaid cuts 'would be historic in their devastation.'" The Senate's revised measure will hurt healthcare and undermine the state's budget, they wrote. But "[t]hese economic consequences pale in comparison to the harm that will be caused to residents across the state, regardless of insurance status, who will no longer be able to get the care that they need."

Tonight, fifty-one senators voted to advance the bill with forty-nine opposing it. Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted with the Democrats to stop the bill from moving forward. Tillis has been clear that he could not support the bill's cuts to Medicaid. Immediately, Trump said he would back a primary challenger to Tillis, saying he would be "looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina."

After forcing changes to the measure through challenges accepted by the Senate parliamentarian, Democrats tonight called out Republicans for releasing the new bill in the middle of last night and then trying to call a vote on it in the middle of tonight. They are demanding that the entire 940-page bill be read on the Senate floor.

As the Republican attempt to hide the budget reconciliation bill suggests, it is enormously unpopular.

In 1890, the Republicans forced through Congress a similarly unpopular measure: the McKinley Tariff, the law President Donald Trump has spoken of as a model for his economic policies. Like today's budget reconciliation bill, the McKinley Tariff skewed the country's economy even more strongly toward the very wealthy, putting more money in the pockets of the richest Americans at the expense of the poorest.

The McKinley Tariff passed in a chaotic congressional session in May 1890, with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over one another. All Democrats voted against the measure, and when it passed in the House, Republicans cheered and clapped at their victory. "You may rejoice now," a Democrat yelled across the aisle, "but next November you'll mourn."

Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party, giving the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House and preserving Republican control of the Senate only because three Republican senators had voted against the tariff.

More than creating a bad midterm for Republicans, though, the fight over the McKinley Tariff hammered home to ordinary Americans that the system was rigged against them. Since the 1880s, Americans had seen the rise of extraordinarily wealthy industrialists who built palaces on New York's Fifth Avenue like Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt's, which cost more than $44 million in today's dollars. There, in 1883, she threw a famous costume ball where 1,200 guests, dressed as birds and hornets as well as knights and famous queens and kings, including Marie Antoinette, used golden spoons at their $25,000 meal.

The popular press closely followed the ball and the social competition that followed it. To workers surviving on pennies and farmers gouged by railroads, such lavish displays of wealth seemed not just outrageous but a sign that something had gone badly wrong in American society. Surely, they thought, a democratic government should not so obviously favor the wealthy.

The fight over the McKinley Tariff gave opponents proof that Congress was working for the rich. In the Alliance Summer of 1890, newspapers sprang up and speakers crisscrossed the plains reminding voters that the government was supposed to treat all interests equally. The famous farmers' orator Mary Elizabeth Lease told audiences that "Wall Street owns the country…. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street." She told farmers to "raise less corn and more hell."

They did. In the 1890 elections, Alliance members backed Democrats who supported their cause, and they elected forty-four members of Congress, three senators, and four governors and gained control of eight state legislatures. Members of both parties listened to the developing anger over economic injustice and shared the fears of Alliance members that democracy was collapsing under an oligarchy of industrialists.

Their insistence that a democratic government should not favor any specific sector of society but should work for the good of all resonated with voters across parties, and lawmakers, especially younger ones eager to build a following, listened.

By 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was leading the demand for fair government. He called for a "square deal" for everyone. The Boston Globe explained: "'Justice for all alike—a square deal for every man, great or small, rich or poor,' is the Roosevelt ideal to be attained by the framing and the administration of the law. And he would tell you that that means Mr. [J.P.] Morgan and Mr. [J.D.] Rockefeller as well as the poor fellow who cannot pay his rent."

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Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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