May 21: CBO reveals bill effectively will lower income of America’s poorest by 4% … Trump demands that fucking Medicaid-fucking bill not fuck around with Medicaid… Current planetary heat levels will eradicate ice, just not the right ICE … McIver due in court on trumped-up charges …
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The House Republican bill enacting much of Pres. Donald Trump’s domestic agenda could be voted on as soon as today, before most of America will learn about the new congressional analysis of how badly it fucks us.
The bill is literally, officially, formally titled, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which in legislative language is the equivalent of naming your movie Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Infinitely more importantly, we finally have data on its impacts, courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the glorious nerds who call bullshit on their bosses’s bill acts.
And as often as I give Politico shit for their headlines, give the devil their due for how they headlined the CBO findings:
The CBO has released two analyses. Republicans asked for one about the bill act’s budgetary impact. Democrats asked for one about the bill act’s human impact — how it moves money to and definitely from different groups. Here are the hard — unless you’re rich — numbers from the CBO:
The lowest-earning 10% of households would lose about 2% of their resources starting in 2027.
The lowest-earning 10% of households would lose about 4% of their resources starting in 2029.
The highest-earning 10% of households would see their wealth increase by 4% in 2027, with subsequent increases varying by year.
Fuck it, why am I writing word facts when the CBO went to all the trouble of making sure congressional Republicans had a visual picture chart of the bill act?
While the bill act does help the wealthy rich with tax cuts, these income losses to the poorest fuckedest do not come from tax increases. These represent the value of what those people will be losing in government services and benefits. Specifically:
$698 billion less in Medicaid, the government health insurance for needy people who need health.
$267 billion less in aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food for needy people who need food. (The bill act spending cuts would affect families with children kids as young as seven years old.)
$64 billion less in other spending.
What does America get for all this poor-people fucking? The Republican-requested CBO analysis concludes that the bill act will reduce increase America’s national debt by $3.8 trillion dollars.
The bill act increases spending on military shit, including weapons and border enforcement. And the CBO’s analysis doesn’t even take into account the $175 billion Trump also wants for his “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
The military spending would defend the American people — from both the missiles no one’s firing at us and the undocumented immigrants sneaking in to assist with our food supply chains, build us new homes, and maybe do some landscaping over by the garden — so that America’s poorest will be totally safe as they die from malnutrition and untreated medical conditions.
TRUMP FOR ONCE AGAINST FUCKING Yesterday, Trump reportedly told House Republicans “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid” in his bill act. He also ordered them to vote for the bill, which fucks around with Medicaid. Tough position!
What Trump meant was don’t fuck more around with Medicaid than the bill already does. Namely, the bill act fucks around with Medicaid by fucking 7.6 million people off of Medicaid, the CBO reported yesterday. And yet, a handful of self-professed opponents of government spending yesterday wanted more Medicaid around-fucking before they approve borrowing $4 trillion more for rich people.
FLASHBACK Even before the CBO’s analysis, economists who looked at the bill act found that it would fuck everyday people every day.
As fellow Substacker Judd Leggum wrote on Monday, the Penn Wharton Budget Model found that the bill act fuck screws the poorest of us on taxes, too. The two lowest-earning quintiles — so we’re talking the poorest 40% of us — will see after-tax income go down due to the bill act. And that’s not including the Medicaid/SNAP impacts the CBO just weighed in on.
Here’s the tax picture from the bill, courtesy of Leggum:
See that massive, blue bar on the right? That’s not you or anyone you know.
Oh, and thanks to early-morning bill act developments in House GOP negotiations, those bars on the right will get even taller bigger. That’s because California, New Jersey, and New York Republicans won an increase in the deductions rich people can claim on whatever state and local taxes they can’t evade.
So now, even if they’re so rich that they have to pay $40,000 just in state and local taxes … they can deduct all of that income plunder from their federal taxes.
How to pay for that? Politico reports they were looking at changes like accelerating cuts to sustainable-energy tax credits. In other words, they’ll take the money — which could have been used to lower energy bills, create jobs, reduce pollution, and delay the destruction of the human ecosphere — and give it to rich people.
Oh, and if you Newsfuckers missed last night’s TFN Bonus Story, it turns out that the corporate media didn’t quite capture the mood of Moody’s unprecedented downgrade of America’s credit rating. If you actually read the thing — which I did, because that’s why you’re here! — it turns out that:
It’s a massive warning not to pass the Trump bill, or America will basically enter a new phase of economic uncertainty and global insecurity.
Republicans lied their lying faces off about what Moody’s said. And corporate media’s pushback consisted of hard-hitting responses such as, “Fair enough.”
NEXT House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) vowed to get the bill act off his plate platter before Memorial Day. How come? Obviously, respect for America’s war dead so no one would have time to read it on the beach while sipping Mai Tais and honoring America’s war dead.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said the GOP is trying to “quickly jam this unpopular legislation [bill act] through … because they know that the longer they wait, the more will come to light about this cruel and unconscionable bill.” To which Republicans presumably responded, you get me.
If remaining GOP holdouts are just cosplaying fiscal responsibility again and do vote for the House bill, it then goes to the Senate. And enough Senate Republicans oppose the House version that it’s very likely to change there.
The big question is whether the House and Senate Venn diagram of America-fucking overlaps anywhere. Or, more realistically, how much Trump will target anyone who looks like they’re blocking that overlap.
Trump said of the Senate GOP’s take on the bill, “They have things I like even better.” Brrr.
Earth Already Too Hot to Sustain, Um, Ice
If efforts to fight climate change don’t lower global temperatures, Earth’s ice sheets may melt entirely, a new study finds, raising sea levels by as much as 210 feet, creating untold suffering for the human race which would be only somewhat mitigated by the near-total disappearance of Florida.
Previously, scientific estimates found that Earth humans would be okay-ish if we reduced our burning of fossil fuels enough to keep the planet from warming 2.7° above pre-industrial temperatures.
Because humans are bad at many, many things, we’ve already let temperatures rise 2.16° above pre-industrial levels. And even if we somehow made Al Gore president tomorrow — fingers crossed! — and kept temperatures steady, that’s still too hot to sustain the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The melting would take hundreds of years, but not a lot of hundreds of years.
The only defense America would have would be Pres. Donald Trump’s Golden Dome, which makes explosions in the sky.
And, of course, if someday Pres. Barron Trump wins the U.S.-Greenland War, the opening of the JD and Kid Rock Vance Memorial Oil Fields would instantly unleash massive tidal waves, drowning elderly former Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in his hospital bed as he burbled out his final maniacal laugh and berated a nurse for his fruit cup.
McIver Due in Court Today, Testing TFN’s Resistance to MacGyver Jokes
Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) is scheduled to appear in federal court today, on Trumped-Up™ charges of assaulting federal law enforcement. McIver was part of a May 9 melee at a New Jersey immigrant detention center, which the law says members of Congress can access whenever the fuck they want but only if beforehand they give absolutely zero fucking notice.
McIver reportedly will be charged and read her rights at this morning’s court appearance before a federal magistrate, who will then set bail. Or will then dismiss the charges as total un-American bullshit and, if this were an Aaron Sorkin movie, deliver a stern lecture to McIver about not being more like his white, male characters.
Your normally-swearing TFN believes but can’t swear that the real-world magistrate is Judge Stacey Adams, an appointee of Gov. Jim Murphy (D-NJ).
Ay, There’s the Rubio
Senate Democrats yesterday finally agreed with Democratic voters that, perhaps no, they shouldn’t have unanimously confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (Senators like to confirm fellow senators because, well, it’s just a nice thing to do.)
In a hearing on Rubio’s funding request — which is 40% lower than what Congress wants to fund State — Rubio’s Democratic supporters turned on him for doing what literally every other person in the country knew he was going to do: Whatever Trump told him to, no matter how much it made him gag or how much he hated the taste.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said, “I’m not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration’s destruction of U.S. global leadership.” (It wasn’t immediately clear why a U.S. senator wouldn’t be boiling with the rage of a million Satans chained to the hearts of a million blazing suns over the destruction of U.S. global leadership.) “I’m simply disappointed,” Rosen added, as if Trump’s secretary of State wouldn’t later laugh about that so hard that he deports an explosive shart into the state of his pants.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) tore into Rubio with a devastating takedown of his absolute lack of character, total absence of principle, and obscene delight in human cruelty: “Marco, I mean Mr. Secretary, you and I have been friends for a very long time, a sense of urgency is what I’m asking for right now.” So, I was, uh, paraphrasing.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who took an unplanned trip to El Salvador thanks to Rubio’s dipshitlomacy, said: “I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State.”
“Your regret for voting for me confirms that I’m doing a good job,” Rubio responded, like a dick. “We deported [sic] gang members [sic], gang members [still sic] including the one [sic] you had a margarita [sic] with,” Rubio said, referring to non-gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia, with whom Van Hollen did not have a margarita.
So, any questions, Senate Democrats considering voting for future Trump nominees? Because the one you all okayed just told you that if they do a good job, you’ll regret voting for them. How to solve this dilemma!
Two Quickies
Two stories I wanna take a deeper look at before weighing in. First, Joe Kent, a deputy to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, ordered rewrites of the intelligence community assessment of Venezuela’s role in gangs immigrating here, in order to protect Pres. Donald Trump.
Second, Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed her absolute and total ignorance about the foundational democratic principle of habeas corpus in a Senate hearing yesterday. I will work to post on both this exchange and the Venezuela stuff, so if you don’t want to miss them, make sure your TFN account settings include getting TFN Bonus Stories!
TCB
THE MISSING PIECE One thing your stuff-doing TFN doesn’t do enough is illuminate what the road out looks like. I tend to assume you Newsfuckers see it inherent in our politics the way I do.
Things change. Big things. Quickly. That’s a two-way ratchet. Lots could change with the big, baleful bill as Wall Street wakes up to its realities and calls their senator on speed dial. And even if it does pass, it’s legislation. It’s undoable any time we choose it. Which is why we — TFN and affiliated Newsfuckers — spread the word.
Which is why TFN shares polls so often about people waking up and opposing what Trump is doing. The more that happens, the faster the pressure mounts against Trump’s agenda. There are lots of hands on the levers that steer America, but more and more of them are ours.
SUPPORTING TFN I’m still committed to keeping TFN a safe space for humans not to be reduced to a monetary commodity by not throwing paywalls in everyone’s faces. But even yesterday’s pitch barely got enough new paid subscribers (THANK YOU!) to hit what I think is the required minimum for sustainability, meaning the recent trend of falling short is essentially still in effect. So, I’m thinking about other things I can do that might goose revenues at least until we hit financial sustainability later this year, good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise more than 210 feet. Please let me know what you’d like to see from TFN that might inspire you to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been making TFN a regular part of your news day for more than a month — so, before April 21! — please consider upgrading today. TFN can only fend off creeping capitalism if enough of you mad Newsfuckers help make it possible for everyone to be welcome here. Thank you.
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ELECTIONS
June 10 — New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary.
June 17 — Virginia primaries.
June 24 — New York City mayoral primary.
TAKING ACTION
June 14: No Kings rallies.
Sept. 21: Climate-action events for Sun Day.
Pre-Christmas: SaveChristmas.net.
The unknown future: Find upcoming events near you here.
Boycotts: Tesla, Target, El Salvador.
RESOURCES
Jim Earl channels your rage
Look up who your member of Congress is and their contact info
Mental reassurance that at least lawyers are fighting back on fill-in-the-blank.
REVOLVING DOOR PROJECT
The Revolving Door Project has a number of ways you can help and/or get help/info:
Tip line (assuming you didn’t send TFN your tip first!)
CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!
Go get ‘em, kids! I mean, Jesus Christ, Wall Street just got on board…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Para-sentences like this should have their own Pulitzer category. Maybe the Ray Adverb (IYKYK) Award for Satirical Excellence.
"And, of course, if someday Pres. Barron Trump wins the U.S.-Greenland War, the opening of the JD and Kid Rock Vance Memorial Oil Fields would instantly unleash massive tidal waves, drowning elderly former Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in his hospital bed as he burbled out his final maniacal laugh and berated a nurse for his fruit cup."
Interesting Penn Wharton graph. As a math moron, I’m guessing that a quintile is 20%. While the spread of the graph suggests a broad distribution, the first 4 quintiles, apparently 80% of the population, are nibbling on crumbs, except where they are expected to contribute crumbs. Meanwhile, the final quintile, which is helpfully broken into higher and highest incomes—and after all income equates to worth—reap preposterously large benefits. The Penn Wharton graph would be more revealing, and more depressing, if it stated the number people—or fuckers, I guess—who inhabit each quintile and sub-quintile.