F**king Mondays: The Shittiest Bill Ever, America's Health Disaster, And the Collapsing Center

Trump's "beautiful" bill would be the largest wealth transfer in U.S history.

Image via CBS

Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the round up today:

Trump’s Shitty, Shitty Bill

The New York Times has a very thorough breakdown of Trump’s domestic spending bill that is now on the floor in the Senate. In short, the bill is absolutely fucking horrendous. If it passes, millions of families will get booted off of Medicaid, and many more risk literal starvation due to huge cuts to food stamps. The bill would add roughly $2.4 trillion (and potentially more) to the national debt over the next decade, and the tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the ultra wealthy and huge corporations. The bill also strips clean-energy credits from the Inflation Reduction Act that would set America’s green tech sector back decades, and increases military spending by a whopping 15%.

I don’t usually quote Bernie Sanders, but as he put it, the bill is “the most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country.” Why is Sanders saying this? Because it is quite literally, the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra-rich ever attempted in a single law. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the bill would reduce resources for the bottom 10% of households and increase resources for the top 10% between 2026–2034.

The bill is so bad that even Elon Musk—who’s largely withdrawn from politics after torching his relationship with Trump—is sounding the alarm:

One of the more ludicrous aspects of the bill is the magical accounting methods used by Republicans to frame its cost. They’re calling the expiring 2017 tax breaks “current policy,” which lets them pretend that making those cuts permanent doesn’t blow a massive hole in the budget.

The Senate is currently in the final stretch—having kicked off an all‑day “vote‑a‑rama” of amendment votes. If the Senate approves the bill — which it is expected to do with a simple majority via reconciliation, it will return to the House for a final vote.

One thing that never fails to infuriate me about Republican voters is their complete inability to grasp that their party has zero interest in reducing the deficit. History has shown, time and again, that Republicans add more to the deficit than Democrats. They only scream about the deficit when a Democrat is in the White House. But when a Republican’s in charge? Suddenly, deficits don’t matter.

American Health Disaster

Because we have an anti-vax nut in charge of the Human Health Services, America is now sleepwalking into a health disaster of gargantuan proportions. The war on vaccines has officially begun, and the groundwork is being laid for one of the most dangerous assaults on public health in modern history. From the Guardian:

A critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability.

The panel was unilaterally remade by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic who has urged against the use of thimerosal despite a lack of evidence of real-world harm.

Across three votes, members voted in favor of restricting thimerosal in seasonal influenza vaccines across all age groups – with five in favor of the restriction, one abstention and one vote against.

“The risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent – as far as we know – risk from thimerosal,” said Dr Cody Meissner, a panel member and professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine who was the lone “no” vote.

Some background: the panel—officially known as the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP)— is a key part of the CDC’s vaccine machine. It tells insurers and doctors which shots to give, and when. Earlier this month Kennedy — who has no background in epidemiology, infectious diseases, or vaccinology — axed all 17 of its members, citing “conflicts of interest,” and replaced them with eight hand-picked loyalists.

The thimerosal conspiracy theory claims the vaccine preservative causes autism and other health issues. It doesn’t. Study after study has shown zero causal link, but that hasn’t stopped the misinformation machine from keeping it alive. The theory plays off public fears about mercury exposure, even though the science is settled. Thimerosal was pulled from most childhood vaccines—not because it was dangerous, but because people thought it was.

It’s unclear how much this will impact flu vaccine supply in the short term (only about 5% still contain thimerosal) but the long-term damage is incalculable. Kennedy is injecting conspiracy theory into actual public health policy, and it will only get worse.

The Center is Collapsing

William Kristol has a superb piece in The Bulwark on the political center in America collapsing. Key quote:

When our institutions are under fierce and sustained assault, the institutions need more than the affection and respect of the institutionalists. When the wreckers attack, the institutions need actual defenders. They need defenders who will fight back. They need defenders who might even launch counteroffensives.

In normal times, those who hold the center and defend the institutions are the “establishment.” But in these abnormal times, much of our establishment has proven unwilling to defend, or incapable of defending, what had been built up by the impressive and hard work of their predecessors. The norms and institutions are crumbling under the blows of the wreckers who control the executive branch of the federal government. The Republican Congress isn’t standing in the way. The Supreme Court isn’t sticking its neck out to stop it.

In Trump’s first term, there was enough institutional resistance to curb his worst behavior. He was impeached (twice) and some Republicans refused to kiss the ring or help him destroy vital government programs. John McCain blocked the decimation of the Affordable Care Act, Mitt Romney voted to impeach him, and Republican Senators like Jeff Lake from Arizona delivered scathing floor speeches condemning Trump’s authoritarian impulses and attacks on truth.

With Democrats out of power and the GOP fully under Trump’s control, the political center has evaporated leaving a giant opportunity for an authoritarian takeover. And that is exactly what is happening. As Kristol writes:

The barbarians are inside the gates. They have made great progress—more than even many of us alarmists expected—in the eight months since Trump’s re-election on November 5, 2024. Mass deportations are well underway. We’re getting used to having federal troops deployed in our cities. We have settled into a Department of Justice that is totally politicized. The assault on the universities is notching up victories. There’s not even a pretense any more that presidential corruption and grift are going to be in any way checked. And the wreckers have at least three-and-a-half more years in which they’ll continue to carry out their destructive projects.

When Kristol says “at least” three-and-a-half more years, he’s acknowledging what few in the political class seem willing to say out loud: Trump might not leave in 2028.

I’ve been banging on about this since Trump announced his 2024 candidacy. I predicted that if he won, that would be the end of the democratic experiment in America. Trump voting friends of mine have dismissed this as liberal hysteria, but I always point out the fact that he already tried to overthrow an election in 2020. The institutions barely stopped him then. But they won’t in 2028.

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