Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, is visiting Washington DC. This is ghastly.
“things happen”; sometimes people are just randomly dismembered with bone saws. especially journalists who ask me mean questions.
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat.bsky.social) November 18, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Things do happen, yes. See also Trump Family’s Business Ties to Saudi Arabia Raise Ethics Worries in the New York Times. The headline understates the situation. Trump is just using the presidency to maximize advantages for his financial interests. He’s blatant about it.
The House passed the Epstein files bill, 427-1. The lone “no” vote was from Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA). Needless to say, this is all transparency theater. The DoJ is not about to release anything that incriminates Donald Trump.
Also today, a federal court blocked the Texas gerrymandering from being used in the 2026 midterms. There’s time for an appeal, of course. Update: See more on this decision by Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
The Supreme Court, as is well known, has created subconstitutional rules that essentially makes discrimination against disfavored minorities legal unless the public official responsible is dumb enough to admit it in legal documents. Because Trump has been systematically firing all of the competent lawyers in the Department of Justice, this is exactly what they did:
Ironically, the Republicans are challenging the California gerrymander on the grounds that it is racially biased. Unfortunately for them, California’s lawyers aren’t that stupid
What has me most worried right now is that Republicans in both the House and Senate are going full speed ahead on Trump’s half-assed suggestion that instead of Affordable Care Act subsidies, people should just get money to put into health savings accounts. Do I need to explain to y’all why this won’t work? It’ll work well enough for people with lots of money, of course, which makes it the ideal Republican plan. See Ryan Cooper, Republicans Will Never Find a Health Care Replacement, at The American Prospect.
It's true. The ACA was the only Republican bill that could have passed. We should have had the courage to go to something better, even a 50-60% single-payer, catastrophic loss health care policy for everyone, for debt-slavery of cancer patients and those with chronic conditions, but at least there's money in the system for worst-case for everyone.
That's kind of how France does it – they have like a 60% universal, single payer system, but it's administered by insurance companies who supply the last 10-30%, and you get to pick your provider, and they can't charge you more than the government subsidy, so they can only compete on service and efficiency, and that sounds like a fine system to me!
But the ACA…
You need money in the system for everyone – that's the individual mandate.
You need insurance available *to* everyone – that's community rating, with minimal age-spread, plus medicaid expansion.
You need that insurance to provide real world outcomes – people's sickness needs to be cured, hospitals can't keep infecting people, etc..
It ticks all the boxes. You won't get better, not without (to be brutal) gelding the insurance companies, to turn the bulls to oxen. You want a nice, powerful, 4mph walk, like oxen, without it running wild to rut.
(Historical fact: until the invention of the horse collar, in medieval times, ox carts provided most motive power, since oxen can be yoked; horses couldn't. But horses, while not as strong, can walk much more quickly than oxen, so the horse collar was a major change in transportation!)
Well, if we won't geld the insurance companies, the next best thing is the French system, where we provide a backstop (so the insurance companies can't cheat dying and desperate people) and the insurance companies can only annoy and delay, but not deny, and, hence, are better off providing excellent customer service, instead.
(NB: I'm brani damagde [sic] and can't be sure I'm properly representing the French system. I don't care.)
There's a profile of the French health care system at the Commonweal website. It sounds as if the taxpayer-funded national health care system pays for most stuff, and people can buy supplemental insurance policies to pay for the other stuff.
"Your mentioning someone who was very controversial…….things happen "
Ok then bonesaws for anyone controversial, take a fucking look in the mirror!
It's really hard for the US to make social progress. Despite the "woke" idealism of Jefferson, it was 80 years after the Revolution when slaves were freed. And another hundred before there was a serious federal effort to codify racial equality. Women got the right to vote 140 years after the Revolution. A hundred-sixty years after the revolution to attempt security for seniors and widows. Two hundred something years to try to establish universal access to health care. But this is the first "serious" attempt to reverse social advances, restore racism, abolish access to health care EXCEPT by income or social status (if your job gives you access to health care.)
Conservatives pee their pants every time social advances are proposed, then claim those rights as desperately as they previously opposed them. (Talk to a conservative about undoing Social Security or Medicare. Ask Justice Thomas about abolishing interracial marriage.) Obamacare is VERY popular. Trump and the GOP think that if they temporarily give health care cash to poor pople, they will gladly drop insurance for a few hundred dollars per month. (And then take away that money when the ACA is demolished.) Trump also thinks he can buy votes by throwing out a few thousand in "stimulus" checks at the right time, bearing Trump's signature, of course.
It will be am interesting test of how shallow and stupid we are.