So, would it surprise you at all to learn that the GOP's "big beautiful bill" ultimately designed to give American billionaires massive permanent tax cuts, literally rips food out of the mouths of struggling American families to do so? In addition to over $715B in cuts to Medicaid, the Republican budget bill also features $290B worth of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade.

commondreams.org/news/republic…

'Catastrophic': GOP Pushes Largest-Ever Cuts to Food Aid to Fund Tax Breaks for the Rich

"The proposal, which is part of the GOP's sprawling reconciliation package, would shift some SNAP costs onto states and expand the program's work requirements, adding procedural hurdles that advocates say will make it harder for families in need to obtain benefits.

One recent analysis estimated that imposing harsher work requirements on SNAP enrollees would cause millions to lose benefits at a time of elevated food costs and rising hunger.

The new bill would also freeze updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to determine SNAP benefit amounts. Freezing the plan would effectively cut SNAP benefits for all recipients, analysts said.

"Bottom line: This bill would worsen hunger and hardship," said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "If enacted, it would be the largest cut to SNAP in history—taking food from struggling families to give tax cuts to the wealthy. Our leaders can and must do better."

While the Dickensian prospect of starving poor people so Elon Musk can buy more horses to improve his sex life is obscene in its own right, don't sleep on the fact that this bill consistently says the quiet part out loud - if you can't work, the government doesn't give a fuck if you die. It goes without saying that these changes to the highly-effective SNAP program would be disastrous for American families, but pretending poor people (including the working poor) and children aren't actually going to starve has long been a staple in GOP policy arguments, and now that Trump has given them the green light to literally fucking kill labor class people for billionaire tax cuts, Republicans want to fulfill their longstanding desire to eviscerate the SNAP program.

Of course, for this bill to pass, GOP representatives in Congress and the Senate have to actually vote for it; which is why its so important to speak with clear and honest language about what this budgetary policy means. The Republican Party is actively trying to kill poor people to enrich their billionaire donors and corporate CEOs and before they vote to do so, it might be a good idea to force them to explain to the media, their political opposition, and their own constituents why they think that's an acceptable trade off.

#USPol #GOP #Medicaid #Budget #ClassWar #Trump #SocialMurder #Cruelty #Food #Oligarchy #Theft #RepublicanParty #SNAP #Hunger

'Catastrophic': GOP Pushes Largest-Ever Cuts to Food Aid to Fund Tax Breaks for the Rich

"House Republicans' proposals would gut this program, and take food away from the hungry to give tax breaks to the ultrawealthy. These budget proposals make it clear where their priorities lie."

^{jake-johnson (Common Dreams)}

@GhostOnTheHalfShell I'm not really allowed to tell people to "drag them through the street" so it's very difficult for me to adequately respond to your post.

What I will say is that these people have names and addresses, even if they don't want to hold town halls, and for the moment, protesting is still legal in America.

I think a lot of people who do have decent media literacy, have presumptions about what the public at large does and doesn't know about the political machinations going on around them. You're pretty well informed and as a speciies, humans tend to externalize their own situations and awareness on to hypothetical other humans. It's just how our brains work.

The reality however is that none of the media they consume is telling them "this shit is going to kill you" or "these guys are nazis who want you dead." Which is why I do what I do.

I can't predict the future, and I'm not psychic. But if people don't KNOW what's going on, they're not going to do anything to oppose it. And quite frankly, this is what I'm allowed to do as a citizen of a fascist dictatorship who didn't run far enough away to speak completely freely when she had the chance. I hope the people who read my work here, tell the people in their lives what they now know, and those people tell other people and so forth.

Will they? I don't know. Some days I'm pessimistic, some days I'm optimistic. There hasn't been much good news for people who don't like fascism recently. Even if this bill passes, all governments, even fascist governments, exist by the consent of the governed. It's just a question of whether or not the people are able to remind them from time to time.

I bet you thought you'd escaped budget stories, didn't ya? Sadly the joke's on us all because the GOP's homicidal class war reconciliation budget can now be fairly described as *historically* awful. As more people analyze the CBO report on the "Big Beautiful Bill" Mike Johnson is ramming through the house for Swine Emperor Trump, it's becoming clear that this is literally an unprecedented high speed robbery of the American labor class, to fatten the pockets of the already obscenely wealthy.

commondreams.org/news/republic…

CBO Report Shows Trump-GOP Bill Would Spur Unparalleled Wealth Transfer From Poor to Rich

"The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the Republican legislation speeding through the U.S. House of Representatives would cut household resources for the bottom 10% of Americans while delivering gains to the wealthiest in the form of tax breaks.

"If enacted, this would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history," Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, said in response to the CBO analysis, which was released shortly before the start of a dead-of-night House Rules Committee hearing on the Republican reconciliation package."

I mean, if I'm being honest I feel like we could just wrap this discussion up right there; it doesn't really get more direct than "the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history." Let's go get some pizza?

Okay fine; there is a little bit of obtuse CBO report language to wade through in this article. Fortunately however the final breakdown isn't all that complex. In addition to stripping over a trillion and a half dollars in long term funding from life-saving social assistance programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and Medicare, this bill also shifts the tax burden onto the least wealthy Americans, to benefit more wealthy Americans in higher tax brackets. Particularly the very wealthy ruling class. Folks already being ground up by capitalism suffer more hardships and worse health outcomes, so rich people can buy more shit that helps them extract even more value out of the American labor class.

In the final analysis the CBO report proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that House Republicans are actively planning to rob and murder poor people, to pay off the rich; which some of you may remember I've been telling you all along. We just have it writing now.

#Budget #Capitalism #Austerity #ReconciliationBill #MikeJohnson #GOP #RepublicanParty #Trump #ClassWar #Murder #Theft #Economics #USPol #CBO #BobbyKogan

CBO Report Shows Trump-GOP Bill Would Spur Unparalleled Wealth Transfer From Poor to Rich

"If enacted, this would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history."

^{jake-johnson (Common Dreams)}

As I've pointed out repeatedly in this thread, there are literally so many things wrong with the GOP's homicidal class war reconciliation bill that it's hard to talk about them all, and observers are discovering new awful things about it all the time. For a pretty terrifying example of this phenomenon, we need look no further than the discovery of a hidden provision in the "Big Beautiful Bill" that will essentially unravel the US constitution, and grant Swine Emperor Trump the fascist dictatorship of his dreams.

I'm absolutely not being hyperbolic, and to prove the point I'd like to examine this late night blog post by former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

robertreich.substack.com/p/the…

The hidden provision in the Big Ugly Bill that makes Trump king

The key thing to understand here is that the hyper-targeted provision Reich is talking about effectively obliterates the only real power federal judges have over Trump, in relation to multiple high-profile lawsuits and court orders stopping the regime from doing illegal, unconstitutional, fascist bullshit as we speak. Things like abducting and attempting to deport foreign student anti-genocide protestors, or kidnapping migrants and trafficking them to a torture prison in El Salvador, for example.

"Not if the Big Ugly Bill is enacted with the following provision, now hidden in the bill:

“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….”

"Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation.

Obviously, courts need appropriated funds to do anything because Congress appropriates money to enable the courts to function. To require a security or bond to be given in civil proceedings seeking to stop alleged abuses by the federal government would effectively immunize such conduct from judicial review because those seeking such court orders generally don’t have the resources to post a bond.

Hence, with a stroke, the provision removes the judiciary’s capacity to hold officials in contempt."

Okay, I want to make sure everyone understands what we're talking about here. While the provision the fascist GOP has snuck into the reconciliation budget bill doesn't specifically empower Trump to rule as a dictator, in enables it in practice and we have a metric fuck-ton of evidence that Downmarket Mussolini will use it to do so. This is an administration that's already openly defying court orders, disingenuously interpreting decades-old legislation to grant the President unconstitutional powers, and publicly trying to dismantle judicial oversight of its again, illegal, fascist activities. Literally the only thing hemming the regime in right now, is that the de facto immunity granted to the President by a disastrous 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS decision last summer, doesn't extend to the rest of the regime. Trump's minions and lawyers can be held in contempt and prosecuted for ignoring or violating court orders; in fact that's currently a very real possibility in two separate and ongoing cases about the El Salvador migrant trafficking operation, which should tell you an awful lot about why House Republicans snuck this provision into the bill under the cover of darkness.

Unfortunately however, and as Reich notes, overpowering a couple of federal judges trying to stop the Trump regime from shredding the US Constitution isn't even rock bottom for this fascist bullshit. The effective elimination of contempt citations would not only render the entire US judiciary impotent and merely advisory, but it would also render the legislative branch (so, Congress and the Senate) unable to curtail, punish, or even investigate executive branch activities; since the President could simply ignore that too without courts being able to hold the regime in contempt. In other words, there would no longer any restraints on the Trump administration except those their consciences provided; and given that these are unhinged genocidal Christian Nationalists, I'm gonna avoid betting on the better angels of their nature. These folks are fascists, and now House Republicans would like to make Trump their dictator; there is no other way to interpret this provision.

"With this single provision, in other words, Trump will have crowned himself king. No Congress and no court could stop him. Even if a future Congress were to try to stop him, it could not do so without the power of the courts to enforce their hearings, investigations, subpoenas, and laws."

Folks, the people who voted to ram this bill though Congress last night are already would-be thieves and muderers; this provision now makes them the willing architects of Trump's Pork Reich. As I've said many times, the courts will not save us; we fight, or this nazi shit walks and heaven help us all.

#Fascism #Trump #Courts #PoliceState #GOP #ReconciliationBill #USConsitution #USPol

The hidden provision in the Big Ugly Bill that makes Trump king

Don’t let this happen

^{Robert Reich}

Well, we're in the shit now. In the event you haven't heard, House Republicans rammed through their nightmare class war reconciliation bill in the dead of night, because when you're voting to murder and rob your own voters, it's best to wait until everyone is asleep. This is of course, bad. The "Big Beautiful Bill" does however still have to make it past the Senate, where there has been pushback over Mike Johnson's proposed $715B in Medicaid cuts; most notably from faux-populist Josh Hawley. Of course, in the US system of government the Senate has the power to alter the bill before voting; which means things could easily get worse too. The long and short of the situation is that we're probably still fucked, but we get to spend multiple weeks agonizing over whether or not we're completely fucked; because American politics is basically the meatspace answer to the Torment Nexus.

All of which means that we're still breaking down the most horrifying aspects of the GOP's homicidal class war reconciliation bill; which honestly might have so much nightmare shit inside that it'll fully pass into law before analysts get a chance to talk about all of the reasons this is a terrible bill. Take for example the unhinged and highly-partisan assault the Republican Party is conducting on green energy initiatives and subsidies. We already know the Trump regime is committed to burning the planet to ash as fast as possible purely as a matter of ideology, but did you know that eliminating everything about Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will also increase household costs for everyday Americans and eliminate as many as 830,000 jobs? These guys sure are good at "the economy."

theguardian.com/environment/20…

Trump’s tax bill to cost 830,000 jobs and drive up bills and pollution emissions, experts warn

The analysis in this article is kind of all over the place, but we're essentially looking at three issues here: job losses, increased household expenses, and climate damage that will be directly caused by this bill.

"And the legislation will cost the US 830,000 jobs by 2030 compared with the status quo, Energy Innovation found. That includes the direct loss of jobs in fields such as solar panel manufacturing and electric vehicle production, indirect job loss from the decreased investments and lower clean energy demand, and induced cuts resulting from consumer spending cuts attributable to layoffs, higher fuel costs, and other third-order effects.

“The Inflation Reduction Act was carefully crafted to create good-paying jobs in deindustrialized communities, underserved communities, and coal communities. We have seen that it is doing just that, creating good jobs you don’t need a college degree to get and opening up pathways to the middle class across the nation,” said Ted Fertik, vice-president of manufacturing and industrial policy at climate and labor advocacy group Blue Green Alliance. “Killing the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act is a direct attack on working Americans.”

I think these devastating numbers speak for themselves, but it's also worth pointing out that because the IRA's green energy spending was specifically targeted at rural, deindustrialized communities, this is going to result in significantly more job losses in Republican voting areas than "blue" states. Whether that matters to you is a question of opinion, but it again exposes that the GOP is actively voting to harm its own supporters at every turn in this bill.

"The bill as it stands will cause Americans’ energy bills to spike by stymying new renewable energy – often the cheapest form of new electricity generation – the non-partisan thinktank Energy Innovation calculated. The average household will see their bills rise by more than $230 by 2035."

I mean who doesn't love paying higher power bills, am I right? Obviously nobody is going to lose their minds over an additional $230 per year in energy costs, but this must be understood in the context of all the *other* ways this bill is going to increase household costs for American families; more expensive power, combines with higher medical costs, and reduced food subsidies to add up to an insurmountable barrier for low income families pretty fast.

“This will all come at the expense of the environment,” said Orvis.

The new bill will also cause the US to emit 260m tonnes more pollution than it would’ve otherwise in 2035, which is more than the entire annual emissions of Spain."

And of course it wouldn't be a Trump-approved bill if it didn't literally kill the planet faster.

Naturally, all this nightmare bullshit is being sold as "ending subsidies for woke corporations" because not getting black lung is apparently woke now. The obvious truth here however is that this ENTIRE bill is a subsidy for rich people, paid for by literally robbing and murdering labor class Americans.

#GOP #Budget #USPol #MikeJohnson #ReconciliationBill #Austerity #ClassWar #Theft #Murder #Capitalism #ClimateCrisis #energy

Trump’s tax bill to cost 830,000 jobs and drive up bills and pollution emissions, experts warn

Bill will unleash millions more tonnes of planet-heating pollution and couldn’t come at a worse time, say experts

^{Oliver Milman (The Guardian)}

With news that House Republicans also crammed in a rule that prevents Medicaid from covering gender affirming care for all Americans, including adults, I wrote a bit about the ongoing anti-trans pogrom that's being almost entirely ignored in American mainstream society. It is however, also a budget story so the link goes in this thread too:

social.treehouse.systems/@Anar…

"As more information leaks out about how objectively horrifying the Big Billionaire Bill the GOP is ramming into law and hoping nobody notices it will kill their own voters actually is, it's becoming clear that the Act is also a way to prosecute the Trump regime's eliminationist agenda at the same time. We've already uncovered a GOP plot to defang judicial oversight over Trump's illegal and unconstitutional mass deportation campaign, and now observers have exposed another last minute change that would deny gender affirming care to, and likely cause the forced detransition of, hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans."

When examining the GOP's homicidal class war budget reconciliation bill, I think it's crucial to also look at why this horrible Frankenstein's monster that now exceeds a thousand pages, is being stitched together in secret and released under the cover of darkness. The fact is Republican strategists know that voting to rob and murder labor class Americans to empower and enrich billionaire broligarch nazis, while legally enshrining a fascist administrative order over US life to defend these changes, is not going to be popular with the American people once they figure out what this bullshit mega-bill actually does. Furthermore, given that there's absolutely nothing subtle about the ways the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" transforms our society at a pen stroke, it is impossible for GOP politicians to lie and deflect their way through discussions about the bill; so they'd simply prefer you didn't know about all the awful shit inside it.

Fortunately however there are a lot of groups forensically dissecting the GOP's budget reconciliation bill, which may well be the worst piece of legislation I've ever seen the US House actually pass. Take for example recent analysis by Public Citizen showing that by forgoing the proposed increases to US military spending and ballooning funding for the Trump regime's objectively illegal and unconstitutional mass deportation program, the government could keep literally millions of labor class Americans (already being ground up by capitalism) from losing healthcare and food assistance through Medicaid and SNAP.

truthout.org/articles/gop-bill…

GOP Bill’s Militarized Funding Boost Could Instead Keep Millions on Medicaid

"According to a report released Thursday by Public Citizen, the reconciliation bill proposes a boost of over $163 billion to militarized spending, including funds for the Pentagon and for the Department of Homeland Security’s mass deportation campaign. This would bring the Pentagon’s yearly budget to over $1 trillion and triple the budget for mass immigration detention, the report says.

Further, this funding boost alone could more than fund Medicaid for nearly 14 million people at risk of losing their health care coverage under the reconciliation bill, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, for 11 million who may lose food assistance under the bill.

Shifting funding away from these lifesaving programs and instead allocating it to militarization is effectively “trading life for death,” the report says.

“This reconciliation package is a direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization,” said Lindsay Koshgarian, report co-author and Program Director at the National Priorities Project, in a statement. “Protecting families from losing health care and going hungry is as simple as rejecting new spending on dangerous and unnecessary weapons and indiscriminate mass deportations.”

The purpose of producing reports like this one is to demonstrate that the Regime is actively choosing to prioritize militarization, violence, and white supremacy over the healthcare and food security of labor class Americans; if somehow massive tax cuts that benefit only the top 10% of Americans, and primarily enrich the literal top 1% of earners in the country, while stacking almost another four trillion (with a t) dollars onto the debt, didn't make the point abundantly clear - this should. Naturally, this kind of analysis is rarely going to be featured in corporate media which largely supports a trillion dollar pentagon budget, and funding for militarized policing (of a particular flavor), so it behooves Americans who're aware of this objectively fascist bullshit to share this information widely; hence, this post.

If we step back to examine the broader picture here however, it's difficult to ignore the message this entire bill sends about what these nazi sociopaths want for our collective future. This is a bill that signs the death certificate for thousands, if not millions of labor class Americans, in order to enrich and empower a ruling class that bought itself a fascist government to prosecute the final stages of a real-as-fuck Pig Empire class war; while actively funding and drastically increasing the Trump regime's ability to prosecute that homicidal agenda by force, both within and beyond American borders. As the planet turns to ash, our civil rights are eroded across the entire Pig Empire, and fascist movements identify an ever-expanding circle of "others" who must be targeted for elimination, passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is an open signal by the ruling fascist party in America that they are preparing to wage, and win, that war immediately; and if the dystopian future they clearly envision for us is any indication, these nazis are playing for keeps.

#Fascism #Trump #Imperialism #ReconciliationBill #BillionaireBill #ClassWar #Theft #Murder #Migrants #MassDeportation #WhiteNationalism #Pentagon

GOP Bill’s Militarized Funding Boost Could Instead Keep Millions on Medicaid

The reconciliation bill is a “redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon,” an expert said.

^{Sharon Zhang (Truthout)}

I hate to keep harping on the same point, but it's almost as if the fascist GOP knows they're probably not going to be able to pass very much legislation before the midterms, so they're determined to squeeze every ounce of authoritarianism and legalized political persecution they can into what is ostensibly, a reconciliation budget bill. Take for example this recent Intercept report revealing that hidden deep inside the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is a provision that would drastically increase criminal penalties for whistleblowers who leak unauthorized disclosures of tax records, and those who “print or publish in any manner” leaked tax return information.

ttps://theintercept.com/2025/05/21/big-beautiful-bill-republican-tax-return-leaks/

Why Does GOP Budget Bill Focus on Punishing People Who Leak Tax Returns?

"As the Trump administration vows to crack down on leakers, Republicans in Congress want to hand the Justice Department even more power to punish one extremely specific type of leak: unauthorized disclosures of tax records, which in recent years have exposed the creative accounting of the Trump family and wealthy allies like Elon Musk.

A provision tucked near the end of the GOP’s massive budget bill — at page 1,081 of the 1,082-page text circulated late Sunday — would double the maximum prison sentence for leaking tax returns to 10 years and increase possible fines from $5,000 to $250,000 per violation.

Boosting penalties for leakers may seem an odd fit for a budget bill, much like the “nonprofit killer” provision that was recently nixed without explanation. Because of their tenuous relationship to fiscal matters, the provisions potentially aren’t allowed under the rules for Congress’s budget reconciliation process."

Obviously this is nowhere near as serious an issue as banning Medicaid coverage for gender affirming care, or carving a trillion dollars out of Medicaid and SNAP programs that keep labor class Americans alive, so you can give billionaire broligarchs like Peter Thiel more spare yacht money; there is however a lot of weird and repressive bullshit going on here. Most importantly, the proposed penalties for publishing leaked tax information is a clear attempt to suppress journalists and free speech rights in general; it almost certainly isn't constitutionally legal, although the jury is very much still out on how much that actually matters in Trump's brave new fascist America.

The other half of this story then is the reality that this provision is all part of a longstanding Republican grievance over Trump's leaked tax returns, and the maximum five year sentence given to the man who leaked them, Charles Littlejohn. You can check out the linked story for more details, but I would still advise against assuming this is purely just a genuflection to Swine Emperor Trump's bruised ego and vengeance complex. The reality is that what the fascist GOP is proposing here amounts to increased targeting of a form of modern whistleblowers, who are only denied that designation because they're targeting the secrets of a wealthy ruling class who employ their considerably financial power to dictate the political possibilities in our society. As climate crisis transforms into climate catastrophe, billionaires buy more Pig Empire governments, and undisclosed wealthy funders pay to disseminate anti-protest, fascist, and even eliminationist propaganda in our discourse, Charles Littlejohn will not be the last whistleblower exposing the tax records of our ruling classes; and the Republican Party clearly means to discourage that behavior with provisions like this one slipped into the reconciliation budget.

#Budget #USPol #GOP #RepublicanParty #BillionaireBill #Trump #Fascism #TaxReturns #Whistleblowers #ReconciliationBill #Media #FreeSpeech #1stAmendment #ClassWar #Billionaires

I know some of you folks struggle with the massive amount of reading it takes to really get a handle on the GOP's class war reconciliation budget, so today I'd like to mix in this eighteen minute video by Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report that covers a couple of the topics we've been discussing in this thread, and includes analysis of some (horrible) aspects of this bill I haven't even had time to touch on yet.

Mike opens up with a discussion about why House Republicans don't want to talk about their sociopathic theft and murder bill that enriches billionaires at the cost of labor class American lives, and some of the ways they're working to obfuscate the truth and discredit accurate analysis of what the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" actually does; including obtaining injunctions against Democrat-funded billboards warning people that the GOP would gut Medicaid funding, on the grounds that the accusations were "false" - which is funny not only because the GOP just advanced a bill that guts Medicaid funding exactly like the Democrat billboards said they would, but also because I don't recall any injunctions ever being awarded to stop the GOP from lying to the public on billboards.

This then transitions into a surprisingly thorough overview of what the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" does; including tax cuts for billionaires, paid for by slashing funding for Medicaid, SNAP, climate crisis mitigation, and student loan reductions. As clips provided by Figueredo demonstrate this is going to harm Americans in all sorts of ways that aren't being discussed very much right now in our political discourse, including forcing the closure of rural hospitals, reducing Veterans services, defunding disability support, driving up unemployment, and of course the elimination of gender affirming care, including life-saving HRT, for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Finally as in my analysis, Mike brings the whole story home by focusing on why this bill will literally destroy America, and represents an active class war against labor class people, on behalf of the very richest members of our ruling class.

It's a slick little presentation, and watching it is worth your time.

The Humanist Report: Republicans DESPERATE to Hide How They Just Voted to Destroy Their OWN Constituents' Lives

youtube.com/watch?v=hv7Imk4rbN…

"House Republicans just passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which transfers wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. After getting what they wanted, they’re not too happy about people asking them about their deceit. For example, multi-millionaire Republican Virginia Foxx condemned the “extreme” language used to describe their disastrous bill, while other millionaire Republicans like Marianette Miller-Meeks ran away from advocates when she was asked about the bill. In this video we’ll look at the pathetic response from the GOP and talk about the most harmful elements of the bill."

#USPol #ReconciliationBill #MikeFigueredo #TheHumanistReport #Video #GOP #ClassWar #TransRights #Medicaid #Snap #Capitalism

@voxofgod And then like if they say they can't, tell them they "only need 30 Senators and David Dayen wrote about it in The American Prospect."

They know TAP; they all read TAP.

Given what I've already written about the GOP's homicidal class war budget, I think anyone who isn't a nazi, a billionaire, or both can readily agree that anyone in a position to stop this monstrous theft and murder bill from getting through the US Senate and becoming law, should do that. The problem of course being that due to the budget reconciliation process, and the Republican majority in the Senate, it hasn't looked like there is anything the Democrats can do to stop this bill from passing if GOP Senators work up the courage to murder their own voters for Trump and his broligarch masters; until now.

What if I told you that in their arrogance and haste to turn the planet to ash for its extractivist donors, Republicans have made a potentially-fatal mistake that would allow Senate Dems to run out the clock on this Congress and prevent a floor vote on the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," or for that matter any other legislation Trump and the GOP wanted to pass into law? Is that something you'd want Democrats to do, even understanding that the price of admission is fully breaking a US Senate that the GOP just smashed itself?

If your answer to that last question is yes, get ready to start phoning Senators, because noted policy nerd David Dayen says its possible, and the Democratic Party already knows so.

prospect.org/politics/2025-05-…

"Only executive branch agency rules can be overturned by a CRA resolution, and only within 60 legislative days after being presented to Congress, in an up-or-down vote that avoids the Senate filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian, joining the auditors at the Government Accountability Office, said that the EPA waivers were not “rules” as defined by the CRA, and therefore couldn’t be put into a resolution. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), in a communication he sent last Congress about these very EPA waivers, agreed that the “federal preemption waivers cannot be reviewed under the Congressional Review Act.”

Yet Senate Republicans said, “Tough, we’re doing it anyway.” And Lee voted with them.

California has already announced that it will sue to maintain its waiver, charging that the Senate had no authority to overturn it. But the Senate operates largely on precedent, and now that the parliamentarian has been disregarded on this point, virtually any action the executive branch takes could be construed as a rule, and therefore subject to fast-track congressional review.

For this reason, Democrats could subject the Senate to time-consuming resolution votes repeatedly, to such a degree that the Senate would not have time to do anything else for the rest of this session of Congress. In other words, Democrats could respond to the waiver vote by paralyzing the Senate, and stopping the giant Trump tax bill from ever reaching the floor."

This article is absolutely wonk shit, and if you're not familiar with the internal mechanics of the US government and Senate rules in particular, it might be a bit of a slog to get through. The important point to understand here is that any alteration of executive branch agency rules, can be used to trigger a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution with the support of only *30* Senators, which triggers an automatic 10 hours of debate and a vote, and all of that *must* be conducted before further Senate business can proceed. Normally this would only affect a very narrow number of situations that come before the US Senate, but the GOP just voted that almost anything they don't like can be considered an executive branch agency rule, so they could fuck over California emission standards, opening up the option for 30 Senate Dems to bring forward a potentially endless number of CRA resolutions and literally freeze the Senate.

That means no floor vote to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or for that matter anything else Trump and the GOP want to ram through the Senate either. As Dayen makes clear, the GOP has effectively unleashed the kraken.

"The bottom line is this: If you found something like 1,000 current or former agency actions—a reasonable number considering all the work executive branch agencies do—you would probably have enough to keep the Senate debating and voting on CRA resolutions through the duration of this Congress.

That means the Senate would never have the ability to take up executive branch or judicial nominations, or legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that recently passed the House. Senate Democrats could put the chamber into permanent gridlock, and thereby save 14 million people from losing their Medicaid coverage, save millions more from loss of SNAP benefits, while also forcing the 2017 Trump tax cuts to expire. That’s the level of hardball that can be played here."

So, I guess the only question left here is are Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats prepared to go nuclear if it'll save perhaps millions of labor class lives? If they aren't, what good are they to us in a fascist America where everyone is next on the firing line?

#Budget

Senate Democrats Have Been Handed a Tool to Stop the Big Beautiful Bill

Thanks to a Republican vote to stop California from setting its own auto emissions, Democrats can challenge virtually any Trump administration action, and eat up time on the Senate floor.

^{David Dayen (The American Prospect)}

Unfortunately we still haven't run out of terrible things to talk about in the Republican Party's homicidal class war budget, the Billionaire's Murder Bill if you will, while it percolates in the GOP-controlled US Senate. I'm a little late to the party, but I'd like to talk a bit about the bill's proposed changes to immigration policy and funding, because I think it exposes how the absurdly-named "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is as much a vehicle to prosecute a white nationalist policy agenda, as it is a piece of budget legislation that openly robs the American labor class on behalf of uber-wealthy oligarchs.

Using this May 17th, 2025 article from The Guardian, I want to focus in on two key areas of discussion here: funding, and ethno-nationalist policy. For clarity's sake however, I'm going to look at them in the opposite order they're presented in the article, starting with funding.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m…

US House Republicans propose fees on immigrants to fund Trump’s crackdown

"More than $50bn is allocated in the legislation to construct a wall along the border with Mexico, as well as fortifications elsewhere. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will receive $45bn for detention facilities, $14bn for its deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire 10,000 new agents by 2029."

This is the most straightforward part of the bill's odious support for Trump's fascist mass deportation scheme, and since it actually deals with allocating funds, this is the part you're supposed to put in a budget reconciliation bill. Frankly speaking however there is nothing appropriate about spending $50B on a border wall we know won't "work" to keep out migrants and as recently as five years ago at least one side of the US political establishment recognized would be a grotesque monument to American nativism; a formerly partisan principle that tragically seems to have fallen by the wayside in the Democratic Party's desperate quest to court suburban cracker voters in the lead up to an election they'd go on to lose anyway. Given that Trump is already using ICE as his white nationalist Gestapo, does anyone who isn't a raging nazi think it's a good idea to let DHS hire 10,000 more ICE goons? Whose interests does it actually serve to hand $45B to private prison contractors, and budget another $14B for fascist mass deportations? Please keep in mind here that you can't divorce these expenditures from the massive cuts to social safety net programs specifically targeting the American labor class; in addition to murdering people for bonus billionaire yacht money, the GOP is saying that your kids should go hungry and poor people should hop in the woodchipper so Trump can build his absurd and racist border wall.

As disgusting as all of that is however, the real kicker here is the way the proposed budget bill works to create a de facto, albeit loose, white nationalist ban on immigration, through the application of unprecedented fees for sponsors of would be immigrants, including asylum seekers.

"Heidi Altman, vice-president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, said the new fees appeared targeted at the sorts of immigrants that the Trump administration has prioritized keeping out, such as asylum seekers, who arrived in large numbers during Joe Biden’s term.

“It’s part of the administration’s assault on humanitarian protections for immigrant communities,” Altman said. “This is an entire new way of thinking about fees as a penalty, essentially, for an immigrant status.”

Under the bill, immigrants would have to pay $1,000 to apply for asylum, $100 to keep an application active each year as it makes it through the overburdened immigration system, and $550 for a work permit. People requesting humanitarian parole to enter the United States would have to pay $1,000, and abused or neglected children who qualify for a program called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status would have to pay $500. Immigration cases can take a long time to resolve in court, but if a defendant asks a judge for a continuance, they would have to pay $100 each time.

These fees do not exist under current law, and the bill specifies they cannot be waived in almost all circumstances."

Look folks, the "both sides" muppets in our discreetly white supremacist media aren't going to grapple with what this bill does because they're terrified of being sued by the Klepto Kaiser, but this is pretty obviously some cracker nazi shit. By putting un-waivable and arduous fees on even asylum processes, the regime is actively working to screen out migrants from poorer, browner countries in the global South in a way that won't immediately be flagged as illegal ethno-nationalist bullshit in the larger discourse; because newsflash, America is kinda racist. Practically speaking however, this is an attempt to enshrine Trump's project to whiten America into law, by abusing the budget reconciliation process.

#GOP #ReconciliationBill #WhiteNationalism #Trump

US House Republicans propose fees on immigrants to fund Trump’s crackdown

Legislation would establish fees to seek asylum, care for a minor in US custody or apply for humanitarian parole

^{Chris Stein (The Guardian)}

Sooo...
I guess we'll have a chance to see what the Dems are actually made of--or if they are indeed complicit.

I don't wanna be a downer here, but my guess is the latter.

☠️ 🇺🇸 ☠️

I've never been a believer in the importance of widely publicizing all the monstrous, fascist bullshit GOP and Republican-aligned officials spout to justify their horrible political decisions when someone finally presses them for answers about why, for example, they're prepared to kill thousands of their own voters to give Broligarch villains more spare yacht money. The simple truth however is that we already know these maggot bootlicking nazis don't give a fuck if labor class Americans live or die; it's written all over their policies, and thus it doesn't really matter what bullshit they come up with to justify those policies. At some point however, the mask slips often enough and these monsters say the quiet part out enough times, that the callous inhuman response to questions about the real human carnage the Republicans are enabling, becomes so repugnant it becomes a story in its own right.

As such I'm gonna do a slop-post round up of some of the most outrageous things GOP politicians and Republican-aligned media people have said to justify their support for, again, a homicidal class war bill that will kill thousands, potentially millions of Americans, and drag the country closer to the fascist dictatorship of Trump's dreams.

Fist up, GOP House Speaker and noted fundie fascist "anti-porn pact with his son" haver Mike Johnson wants you to know that if the One Big Beautiful Bill Act kills you, or someone you love, it's because you were undeserving of medical care.

huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnso…

Mike Johnson Claims 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Will Only Cut Medicaid For Undeserving People

“The numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse,” Johnson said on CNN."

Even setting aside the fact that Johnson is lying, this is absolutely going to harm people who depend on Medicaid, and the numerous reports in this thread prove it; what the Speaker openly admitted is more or less that if you can't work, the government considers you "waste, fraud, and abuse" which is an extraordinary thing to say to underpaid, underserved labor class people you want to keep voting for you.

Next up, the Republican Senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, resorted to amateur existentialism to defend her support for the Billionaire Bill. Sure, this legislation will kill people, but on a long enough timeline aren't we all going to die?

truthout.org/articles/gop-sena…

GOP Senator’s Defense of Medicaid Cuts: “Well, We All Are Going to Die”

"As Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst answered a question about the GOP’s cuts in a town hall, constituents concerned over the future of crucial lifesaving programs yelled, “people are going to die.”

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst responded, in an exasperated tone. “For heaven’s sakes. For heaven’s sakes, folks.”

Like Johnson above, Ernst also resorted to bald-faced lies about the GOP's desire to protect the most vulnerable; which once again can be confirmed as absolute bullshit due to the overwhelming number of nonpartisan analysis reports indicated the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is definitely going to kill poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized people. In addition to targeting trans people, effectively banning asylums seekers from nonwhite countries, and helping Trump ignore court orders.

Things were no better on Trump state news, otherwise known as Fox. Over there, host Brian Kilmeade wants you to know that this is only going to affect broke people "addicted to free money" in the form of healthcare, and those chumps would have died already if the program worked like it's "supposed to."

Fox Host Blames Gutting Medicaid On Poor “Healthcare Addicts”

youtube.com/watch?v=82WKhBF2Lg…

I'd like to take a moment to pick out that last line of reasoning, because it runs through a majority of the ways these nazi ghouls are trying to justify throwing your grandma into a woodchipper while releasing the largest Pentagon budget in American history *and* giving the uber-wealthy ruling class the largest tax cut we've ever seen, at the same time. You see, it would be very hard for the GOP to just straight up deny the Billionaire Bill is going to harm millions of labor class people in terrible ways, although some are trying that strategy. What they've settled on is an argument that Medicaid and other social safety net programs were never intended to help all the people they'll be denying coverage to. There's just one problem in that this argument does nothing to address the human carnage the bill is going to cause; they're saying if you die, you were always meant to die, and they're not even blinking while doing it.

Finally of course, we need to give a special shoutout to GOP Congressman Mike Flood, who when confronted at a town hall about a provision in the bill he'd just voted for, blurted out that he hadn't even read it.

Town hall ERUPTS over GOP rep.'s confession about House budget bill

msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/town-hal…

#GOP #Budget #ClassWar #MikeJohnson #USPol

Town hall ERUPTS over GOP rep.'s confession about House budget bill

Nicolle Wallace reports on the intense questioning Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., received at a recent town hall.

^MSNBC

Friends, how good is it in politics when you pass a bill that will murder your constituents, in the dead of night, and them immediately afterwards have to spend every day lying about what the bill does, calling your own voters leeches, and pretending you didn't even read it before you voted to pass it? Yeap, House Republicans are trying to defend voting for the Billionaire Bill again.

First up we once again return to the GOP Speaker of the House, and fundie fascist puritan creep, Mike Johnson. After essentially claiming everyone who dies because of the cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act probably deserved it went over like a lead balloon last week, Johnson was back in the media recently to inform you that if 4.8M people lose healthcare, that was a result of personal choices, and no concern of Congress's.

truthout.org/articles/republic…

Republicans Are Mocking Americans They Want to Take Medicaid Away From

“Those 4.8 million people will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so,” Johnson said.

He was referring to a figure from the Congressional Budget Office suggesting that 4.8 million people would lose coverage and become uninsured under the GOP’s work requirements for Medicaid.

The right, meanwhile, has spun that figure into meaning that those 4.8 million people could gain employment and get back on Medicaid. This is misleading, as research has found that stricter work requirements would not increase employment while also barring those unable to navigate red tape from enrolling.

Other estimates of the consequences of work requirements put that figure far higher, with some saying that 36 million people could lose coverage, or roughly half of Americans enrolled in Medicaid."

Regardless of whether you think the CBO's estimate is undercounted or not, please keep in mind that even these 4.8M people represent only a portion of anywhere from 9 to 13M estimated Americans who will lose Medicaid coverage if this bill gets through the Senate unaltered. Naturally Johnson has no words to offer them because he wants you to focus on the work requirements, so he can engage in the time-honored winger tactic of demonizing those receiving any kind of social safety net benefit as lazy thieves who should just get a job. As the Truthout article I shared goes on to note however, Johnson is openly lying and the vast majority of people on Medicaid already work and just don't make enough money to afford health insurance. As we noted in a post above, the generous estimate is that perhaps 8% of recipients are the able-bodied people who could work, but aren't that Mikey is demonizing here, and most of those people are temporarily out of work entirely because of decisions made by employers. Regardless, even if every single person in that 8% immediately got a job because of work requirements, the GOP reconciliation budgets broader cuts to Medicaid go far, far deeper than that number could possibly account for. Which of course leads one to question how working poor GOP voters are going to feel when they find out the Republican Speaker of the House meant *them* when he said the budget was targeting lazy people making a personal choice not have healthcare? Leopards may be eating faces all around.

Next up we have everyone's favorite Mom for Hitler, Florida Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. When confronted about her vote for a reconciliation budget bill that also bans state-level legislation on AI technology for the next ten years, Marj offered up the outrageous but entirely plausible excuse that she didn't even read it before she voted for it.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized for not reading Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ bill

"Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn widespread criticism from Democratic colleagues for admitting that not only did she not read Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill before voting for it, but she would have voted against it had she read thoroughly.

Greene revealed she was unaware of a provision in Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” (OBBB) that would prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence systems for a decade. The Georgia representative said she would have voted against the entire bill if she had known about the AI language buried on pages 278-279.

“Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years,” Greene wrote on X. “I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”

I mean, I for one do not have a particularly hard time believing the Jewish space lasers lady isn't a big reader. That having been said, it sure is hard to credibly pretend a homicidal class war murder and theft bill that kills your voters for billionaires is "beautiful" when feigned ignorance and sneering austerity propaganda is all you can offer to defend its provisions.

#GOP #USPol #Budget

Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized for not reading Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ bill

Republican extremist says she would have voted against tax and spending bill if she knew about AI language

^{Joseph Gedeon (The Guardian)}