Before getting to the Big Ugly Bill, this just happened — this morning SCOTUS seriously wounded birthright citizenship. Further, it handed Trump a whole lot of power to further shred the Constitution. The Court didn’t address birthright citizenship directly, but in a 6-3 vote it decided federal courts could not issue universal injunctions. So the injunctions to stop Trump’s denial of birthright citizenship have, as I understand it, suddenly all been canceled. It may be that a court’s injunction could still be in effect in that court’s district, but I’m not yet sure. Anyway, watch ICE start rounding up people who were born here and presumed to be citizens all their lives. This is horrible.
Now, on to the Big Ugly Bill.
As I understand it, the One Big Ugly Bill has been pretty much gutted by the Senate Parliamentarian. The only surprise here is that as of this writing Trump hasn’t tried to fire the Senate Parliamentarian. I’m wondering if he even knows what’s going on with the bill. He’s been obsessed with getting credit as Master of World Peace and Military Brilliance, and also with who leaked the bombing assessment that makes him look bad. I don’t know if they’ve covered the OBUB on Fox News much. And his staff may be afraid to tell him. So he might not fully appreciate what’s going on.
Yesterday the Parliamentarian stripped out a provision that would have curtailed states from taxing Medicaid providers. And why would states tax Medicaid providers? The taxes collected are returned to the providers in the form of state Medicaid funds, which then earns the state matching funds from the feds. It’s a way to game the system to get more Medicaid money, in other words. Every state but Alaska does this. Crippling the practice would be a handy way to cut Medicaid without explicitly cutting Medicaid. And stopping those matching funds would save the feds about $250 billion. But now it’s out. Some folks are saying that this change alone threatens the survival of OBUB.
This was only one of more than a dozen provisions the Parliamentarian nixed yesterday. And I understand she’s tossed out several more today already. Naturally the dimmer lights in Congress — such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tommy Tuberville — are screaming furiously and calling for the Parliamentarian’s removal. So far, John Thune is saying he will abide by the Parliamentarian’s decisions. That may change if Trump ever weighs in.
However — and this is pure speculation — it may be that at least some GOP senators are secretly welcoming the Parliamentarian’s shredding of OBUB. One, the bill is hugely unpopular. A whopping majority of the public doesn’t want it. Two, at least some of the GOP senators seem to realize the bill would have lots of nasty real-world consequences that people would actually notice and blame on them. And it really would create a ruinous dumpster fire of debt.
However, there’s also a lot of speculation in media that the GOP will come together and pass whatever pile of crap the bill has become this weekend, because Trump wants a bill to sign on the 4th of July. This leave them no time for negotiation. Whatever is approved for reconciliation is what the House will have to agree to. I think that’s unlikely, but we’ll see.
In other news —Trump Says He Gave Iran Permission to Bomb U.S. Base in Qatar and…Well, Mostly Crickets?
Regarding birthright citizenship the USSC did not uphold the unconstitutional decree. They can't. Too many Americans can read. The bastards want to perpetuate a policy that violates the Constitution.
Unless the USSC takes the case on the merits, it will have to be delivered at the Circuit Court level in each of a dozen districts.
We need to pack the court the moment we have the power to do so.
Per at least one opinion I saw yesterday, there was a suggestion that you needed to create a class action in order to get a nationwide injunction. Otherwise, you could only cover the *plaintiffs* – not the circuit.
Per a dissent, paraphrased, it says "no matter how illegal your actions are, we'll only protect people who have standing, and the money and resources to bring an attorney to bear on the issue. Everyone else can be treated illegally."
Of all the nationwide injunctions that should have passed muster, the one protecting birthright citizenship was the easiest one to say "yep, that deserves a nationwide injunction, it's clearly and obviously unconstitutional."
Harry Litman, Supreme Court EVISCERATES Precedent with Appalling Ruling, about how courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions. Another guardrail got mowed down.
My go-to music for when conservatives do Stupid Things.
Here in flyover country the Big Bag of BS bill has caused a bit of a split in what has always been a big gaping chasm party. Ads favoring clean energy interests contest with ads from the oil and dirty energy crowd as the BS bill has quite the dirty bias. The Man of La Mar-a-Lago does have a totalitarian bent and a bitter hatred of the windmills he jousts with obsessively. Windmills that are a bit of a gold mine for a state rich in wind and open spaces for windmills. It is a clean rich though, and he tends to cater to the filthy rich. They tend to occupy quite divergent sides of the big gaping chasm.
Margret Hoover and Lisa Murkowski talked Alaska on Firing Line without Bill Buckley last eve as they occupied the opposition side to the BS bill for similar and other reasons. Alaska will be in quite the pickle without federal program assistance, with vast areas of land taking quite the beating from climate change. For some reason that climate scientists have made sense of, climate change effects are bigger in northern climates. Add to this quite the rural nature of a huge state with low population and scarce social and essential resources this BS bill becomes a politically engineered disaster for most of the people in the state. This upcoming disaster on top of the ongoing climate disaster that has made whole towns uninhabitable and much more. Lisa Murkowski is a survivor of an old guard primary attack and has a book out on that and more. Alaska kept her on in the Senate with a write-in move over the old guard replacement attempt. Alaska is lucky to have the rare republican labeled Senator who actually tries to represent the people of her state. They did the hard work to keep her in office.
Silver linings are not plentiful in this storm of totalitarianism. Its victims suffer and perish more by the day. No gas chambers yet, but more camps are funded well by the BS bill as are its storm troopers. The DOGE creatures continue to enlarge the list of expendables while the battle enlarges against the press, academia, arts, and sciences. Obliteration and Obfuscation are Maureen Dowd's words of the day. I'm kind of stuck on the word horror. Horror now at the flood of BS coming to railroad the BS bill over the finish line. We face obliteration from another flood of obfuscation. One horror on top of a big heaping stinking pile of horrors.