Today the Supreme Court gave Trump the green light to go ahead and fire federal civil service workers as he pleased. The only dissent was from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I don’t have to tell you what a disaster this is.
The on-again, off-again deportation of migrant farmworkers is on again, apparently. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has a grand plan to replace migrants with Medicaid recipients.
“There will be no amnesty,” Rollins said Tuesday during an event at USDA headquarters highlighting the administration’s efforts to strengthen farm and national security policy. “The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way, and we move the workforce towards automation and 100 percent American participation.”
“With 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly,” she added, referencing Medicaid participants currently in the program who don’t yet meet the reconciliation package’s new work requirements.
I believe the work requirements don’t go into effect until after the Midterms, although I could be confused. The other problem with this plan is that most able-bodied Medicaid recipients age19-65 already have jobs.
The Senate is set to vote on a rescissions package that narrowly passed the House in June and would cancel already appropriated federal funds for public broadcasting and some foreign aid programs.
Republicans only need a majority vote for the legislation to pass the upper chamber. But Schumer warned GOP lawmakers in a Tuesday letter that passing the rescissions package will have “grave implications,” such as Democrats blocking any government funding deal and risking a government shutdown.
“[I]t is absurd for [Republicans] to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes,” Schumer wrote.
Let’s see if he sticks to this.
Trump must be bored. He’s run out of countries to bomb, or else the Fox News bobbleheads aren’t talking about him enough. So he’s gone back to his other feel-good fix, raising tariffs. Paul Krugman has a substack column up called The Tariff Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves that is a must-read. And I mean all the way through. Somebody really needs to take the car keys away from Grandpa.
Yesterday I linked to a Josh Marshall post called Critical Read About the BBB, Federalism and the Future of American Democracy. Do read it if you didn’t, and then read a sequel, ICE’s Penumbra of Abuse. The U.S. is about to throw more money at expanding ICE than most countries spend on their militaries. It’s fairly obvious Trump is thinking about using ICE against anybody he chooses to oppress. We’re all in danger.
The USSC has a view of the power of the presidency with few limits. I did not say "NO Limits." They have turned down Trump from time to time. For example, I think the USSC decided Trump can't remove the head of the Fed but he can remove the heads of other "independent" agencies. The USSC unanimously sustained an order to return Garcia from El Salvador. , I haven't come close to predicting how they will decide, but I have the disadvantage of being familiar with the Constitution. Where will they draw the line when….
Trump orders the Feds (I can't guess what agency.) to take over the administration of a state or city government?
Trump orderrs the military to replace the police and conduct arrests for freedom of assembly, freesdom of speech protests?
Trump uses ICE in activities completely outside of immigration as his Gestapo? (Eapecially relevant if the USSC has shut down the use of the military within US borders.)
Trump makes arrests of citizens with no charges and in violation of federal law? (There's a strict timetable following detention when a citizen must be presented to a judge to determine if the potential charges have any foundation and respond to DOJ requests to continue detention.)
Trump tries to mess with the election process in swing states before the election? federally ordering purges of voter rolls, for example.)
Trump arrests journalists critical of the administration and/or orders them to divulge sources of stories damaging to the administration?
Trump (through ICE) conducts and denies abductions of citizens known to be activists in the resistance to the administration?
Trump suspends elections?
“With 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly,”
That sounds like something some right-wing podcaster or some random magat running for office would say, problem is this person is in charge of a huge government agency she has absolutely no fucking idea how to manage. Only the best people? I don't understand why the democrats are not funding some god damn ads to counter the snow queens ads about deporting "rapist, murderers, etc" show ICE chasing people through the fields, arresting landscapers, home depot, there is all kinds of video, what the fuck are these people doing? It's no wonder the GOP is winning our side is always sitting on their fucking hands?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw6e1AB60fw&list=RDCw6e1AB60fw&start_radio=1
Looking way back in the earth's history, life was different. In the ooze a mutation developed that could consume carbon and release oxygen using energy from the sun. Without that mutation humans would have never existed nor much of present life forms. It is mentioned and significant at the time because it caused what was then a third of all life on earth to become extinct. Much existing life at the time could not exist with higher levels of oxygen in the environment. The climate changed. Many life forms of the day could not adapt and perished.
That was quite a while ago, with an age that is best expressed in exponential notation. The changes life made had eons to occur, and the oxygen rich environment was quite a boon to the life that survived over the next huge span of time. Humans have existed only in tiny span of that time. Yet humans have, in just a small number of years managed in the last few hundred years or so, to significantly change the earth's climate. Only a small percentage of humans alive today even know, understand, and accept these facts. We now live in a country where our leadership is gaining huge increases in authoritarian control and in denial of these facts. They have already attempted to effect change by active repression of these facts and reasonable efforts to slow the rate of change are facing increasing levels of impediment. Efforts to understand and reasonably adjust to climate change are actively repressed.
This huge red flag is being met by a psychotic notion that reality ignored ceases to exist. That in itself is even a bigger red flag. The destruction of organizations that study and inform about these facts are also under attack. This should be even a bigger and bolder red flag. Fires, floods, heat deaths, rates of extinction, and other effects of the climate change are downplayed as the omens of our inevitable future without effective corrective actions. How big, bold, and red does a flag need to be to overcome this national mental illness? Is the stress of the problem too large for the human species to handle? It seems to be in this country at least.
We sure picked a bad time to set a poor example. In the long run life will adapt to the earths changed conditions. What percent is not known and what evolutionary branches can adapt may never be known. Some of our species was lucky enough to know a bit about earths very young history for a period of time when life on earth was quite different. There is no guarantee life on future earth will ever know we ever existed. Just as the dinosaurs never saw their future coming or lack of one, no life form will ever know our fate, and how or why humans missed all those red flag warnings. Then again, future anthropologists of some future species may find clues to our apparent drive toward self-extinction from our remains.
In an obsessive quest for an artificial intelligence the human species failed to use the intelligence the species naturally had. This some future species might say some future day. Then hopefully have a good laugh.
Krugman seems to share my current TUDE. Why bother to make laws when…Why bother to do anything when…It is the Art of the Misdeal.
"Why make a deal with a man who will surely break it?"
The only thing we can count on is that we cannot count on anything nor can any other country trying to deal with ours. I don't blame them a bit for any response they make. I don't want to do business with us either. They have my total sympathy for all that is worth.