Since I don’t have a car, I spent much of yesterday either riding on or waiting for buses to get to a phone repair shop. Which I finally did, and as the proprietor was testing the battery, which was fine, the phone came back to life. So now the phone is working again, no charge for the fix, but what an exhausting hassle. And Mercury is not in retrograde; I checked.
Okay, so where was I? Much of the news over the past few days has been about Trump’s falling poll numbers. He’s not just historically unpopular; with the exception of “border security” his “policies” are underwater as well. The majority do not like his handling of the economy, or of immigrants, or anything else. Yet he’s not getting the message. Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump is doubling down rather than backing off.
Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.
It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.
Josh Marshall writes that Trump has already lost.
I see the signs all around. He’s doubling down on things people don’t like. He’s fomenting a growing political backlash. The more signs we see of the limits of Trump’s power, the more people show signs of bucking that power. All power is unitary. We see signs of it everywhere. You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.
They are now reacting to initial resistance by doubling down on things that are not popular. They appear to be upset that they’ve managed to have fewer deportations during Trump’s first hundred days in office than Biden had in his last hundred. Now they’re going to crack down on local officials and are threatening more indictments of judges and other officials who get in their way.
Good luck getting 12 jurors to convict any of these people.
Nobody is saying that the administration is going to collapse soon. It’s going to be a couple of months before the effects of the tariffs hit the retail stores, and consumers.
We still don’t know what’s going to happen to Medicaid. The last I heard, the Republicans in the House were considering ending the federal subsidy (which covers about 90 percent of the cost) and telling the states they can keep Medicaid if they can fund it themselves. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these people that it’s the Red states that will cancel it immediately. But these often are the states, especially the rural ones, that need Medicaid the most, to keep hospitals open and their larger percentages of poor people from losing all access to medical care. Cutting Medicaid will be economically devastating to large (and very Red) parts of the country. Are Republican politicians collectively trying to shoot themselves in the foot?
The House also is talking about work requirements for receiving Medicaid. This has been done in some states; it usually just adds a lot of administrative cost and hassle and doesn’t save the state any money. I’m not sure what percentage of Medicaid recipients are either seniors or children, but it’s probably a lot.
Not surprisingly the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed Joe Biden.
“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform after the economic news dropped, and markets braced to open lower.
“I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.
“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”
But most economists are telling us there is no way the economy will get better as long as Trump refuses to completely change course. It’s probably not too late to salvage a decent economy out of the mess, but Trump is unlikely to let that happen.
So there we are.
Worth reading: Jamelle Bouie, The New Deal Is a Stinging Rebuke to Trump and Trumpism.
Update: Josh Marshall is calling out House Republicans on the Medicaid cuts.
What we haven’t had until recently is good data for how many constituents House moderates are ready to axe. But now the Center for American Progress has mushed together budget and census data to show the number of people who lose coverage by district with each option.
So let’s start with one of my favorites: New York Republican Mike Lawler (NY-17). Under the $880 billion proposal, 42,000 of Lawler’s constituents lose their health care coverage. Under the Obamacare cuts, the number who lose their health care is 25,300. It’s fewer but … more than 25,000 of his constituents lose their health care. It’s even wilder when you look at Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11) just south on Staten Island. Under the big slash, 79,000 of her constituents lose their health care coverage. That’s more than 10% of the people in her district. Under the kinder, gentler slash that Politico says the moderates want, the number is 58,800. Ummm okay, only 8%.
Lemme throw in one more detail. Speaker Mike Johnson? 88,000 lose coverage under the big slash — and 59,800 under the kinder, gentler slash.
Lawler is my congressman. Awhile back he was running Facebook ads promising to not touch Medicaid. I knew he’d cave; the only question was how much.
Welcome Back!
Why does the economy and the markets suck: “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,”
Why haven't you ended the Ukraine war in 24 hours: “This is Biden’s war, not Trump’s,”
Donald J. Trump "THE BUCK STOPS OVER THERE"!
When will our media stop reporting on anything he says as having meaning? The man is a complete imbecile everything he says is complete poppycock none of it means one god damn thing. All is does is run his fucking mouth.
Regarding Medicaid reimbursement, the threat is to Medicaid expansion in the ACA. Normal Medicaid is paid for on a sliding scale, 50-80% paid by the feds, but Medicaid for coverage of all people up to whatever-% of the poverty line, under the ACA, is paid at 90%. Republicans want to move that 90% to the same sliding scale.
Even the wealthiest states probably can't afford to maintain the expansion at that sliding scale level, but, Republicans will blame that on the governors of those states.
This lets Republicans claim they're cutting Medicaid to "save it for the truly deserving!" and that they're "not cutting benefits to anyone who deserves Medicaid" and so forth.
Honest journalism would shred the story, and the Republican Party, to bits. But honest journalism is bad business – if you piss off the Trump supporters, you'll go out of business, and won't be able to keep making money by lying to the public, so, people try some truly, staggeringly, dishonest journalism, the kind they never used to run, because this kind of story – where you hide the plain truth, to make the lie easier to sell – should be a paid political advertisement, not a straight "news" story.
"Republicans want to cut Medicaid, especially the ACA expansion," is the story. Getting quickly into the weeds about 50-80% versus 90% reimbursements is bad storytelling, IMHO. That's the sort of thing that should be near the end of the story, where you're explaining the stuff no one really wants to know, but need to know, for full understanding. "Republicans claim they are only changing the reimbursement rate for Medicaid, but the actual numbers show that this won't work, here are the DOLLAR FIGURES which show they're lying."
(This is all my humble opinion about the journalism I've seen around the Medicaid cuts – I hope it doesn't sound like I'm dumping on your post. I maintain that a lot of stuff that's pushed to the front paragraphs should be in the final paragraphs, where equations, exercises, and excuses, belong.)
Thanks; you explained it better.