Jennifer Rubin was a star columnist at The Washington Post, but resigned after Jeff Bezos tried to exert control over the opinion pages to makts writers less antagonistic to Trump. Ironically, Rubin was originally hired by The Post to be its conservative columnist. But the extremism of the MAGA movement repelled her. After she resigned from The Post, she started a blog called The Contrarian, where she has gathered a stellar lineup of other journalists.
The horrifying assassination of Minnesota state legislator Mellisa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted assassination of state senator John Hoffman and his wife on Saturday followed a week in which the full magnitude of Donald Trump’s violence, cruelty, chaos, and insatiable quest to destroy American democracy as we knew it were on full view. At a time when the country is in dire need of empathy, unity, and healing, MAGA Republicans will return to D.C. this week to pick up where they left off in their reconciliation debate wrangling: seeking to pass a bill that includes the most monstrous transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the uber-rich in recent history.
The Congressional Budget Office determined that if the House bill gets enacted, the bottom decile of Americans by income would lose about $1600 while the top 10 decile would gain more than $12,000. Meanwhile, the debt would balloon to 134% of GDP by 2034.
The MAGA reverse-Robin-Hood scheme would, among other things, remove 11 Million people from Medicaid, 5 Million from the Affordable Care Act exchanges, slash SNAP by more than $700M, “strip 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents of eligibility for the Child Tax Credit,” and eliminate or reduce energy credits and subsidies, sending energy costs soaring, particularly in red states.
The bill targets certain categories of legal immigrants (e.g., TPS holders or asylum seekers) by removing them from access to ACA exchanges and stripping them of Medicare benefits (after they have paid into the system).
The party that once stood for federalism would bludgeon states to eliminate Medicaid benefits for these people, provoking the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ assessment that:
“This policy is a direct affront to state sovereignty, placing enormous pressure on states to reduce or terminate coverage programs that their lawmakers have adopted and that they have a legal right to provide or face devastating cuts to Medicaid expansion funding…It goes beyond coercion by imposing a direct, virtually unavoidable penalty on some states.”
Consider the monstrous tradeoffs the bill entails. Former car czar Steven Rattner found that “just the tax cuts for people earning over $500,000 a year would cost $1.1 trillion, very close to the $715 billion that would be saved by cutting Medicaid and SNAP.”
Especially hard-hit would be rural residents in Red states who disproportionately rely on Medicaid. Moreover, their hospitals, which are dependent on Medicaid reimbursement, would go under in dozens of communities. Shuttering hospitals not only deprives residents of access to health services, but in many cases it would mean eliminating the area’s main employer.
Voters have gleaned how this is going to work. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows “seven in ten adults (72%) are worried that a significant reduction in federal funding for Medicaid would lead to an increase in the share of uninsured children and adults in the U.S., including nearly half (46%) who are ‘very worried’ and one in four (25%) who are ‘somewhat worried.’” In addition, 71% think the bill will negatively impact hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care providers in their communities (71%).
The most heinous aspect of all: Due to the massive cuts in healthcare coverage, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania estimate an additional 51,000 Americans would die each year.
Former president Joe Biden used to say, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Apparently, MAGA Republicans value savaging the poor to stuff more money in their (and their donors’) pockets, turn America into an anti-legal immigration country, and rob people of healthcare and other vital programs.
The bill’s damage does not stop there. With the huge increase in debt, borrowing costs for individuals and businesses would go up. “A spike in the national debt can be enough to boost inflation on its own,” the Washington Post reports. The government’s rising borrowing costs would yield painful results for families. “A 1 percent increase in the ratio would amount to extra annual interest costs of $60 for car loans, $600 on the typical mortgage and $1,000 for small business loans after five years, the Budget Lab found. After 30 years, the premium is even higher — adding $2,300 per year to the typical mortgage, for example.
All of that comes on top of the Trump tariffs, another regressive tax that falls disproportionately on lower-income Americans.
No wonder the MAGA bill is so unpopular. The latest Quinnipiac poll found voters oppose the plan by a margin of 53% (including 57% of independents). MAGA Republicans who rubber stamp this bill would therefore be inflicting monstrous pain on Americans, growing the debt, and taking perhaps the worst political vote of their careers.
Trump came to office promising to reduce inflation, lower costs, clamp down on energy prices, and even balance the budget. Instead, if MAGA Republicans allow him, he will continue to increase inflation, raise costs, ignite higher energy prices, and bust the budget. When voters go to the polls in 2026 and beyond, they are not likely to forget who betrayed them.
Guns are the leading cause of death among children. A new study concludes that states that have eliminated gun restrictions have higher death rates among children than states that have retained restrictions. The National Rifle Association, which opposes any restrictions on access to guns, dissented.
The NRA, the Supreme Court, and the gun-loving Republican Party can take credit for the deaths of thousands of children. Their extremist interpretation of the Second Amendment is lethal to children.
Firearm deaths of children and teenagers rose significantly in states that enacted more permissive gun laws after the Supreme Court in 2010 limited local governments’ ability to restrict gun ownership, a new study has found.
In states that maintained stricter laws, firearm deaths were stable after the ruling, the researchers reported, and in some, they even declined.
Guns are the leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 1 through 17, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Brigham Hospital in Boston, who was the study’s lead author, said he was dismayed to find that most of the children’s deaths were homicides and suicides.
“It’s surprising how few of these are accidents,” Dr. Faust said. “I always thought that a lot of pediatric mortality from guns is that somebody got into the wrong place, and I still think safe storage is important, but it’s mostly homicides and suicides.”
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, called the study “political propaganda masquerading as scientific research.”
The study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, examined the 13-year period after the June 2010 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, applies to state and local gun-control laws. The decision effectively limited the ability of state and local governments to regulate firearms.
The researchers classified states into three categories based on their gun laws: most permissive, permissive and strict. They used a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database to analyze firearm mortality trends from 1999 to 2010 — before the Supreme Court ruling — and compared them with the 13-year period afterward.
Nationally, they found that the number of people under 18 who died from firearm injuries in the period after the ruling exceeded the projected figure for that time by about 7,400, with a total of about 23,000 fatalities.
But in the nine states with the strictest gun laws, youth firearm deaths did not increase. In four — California, Maryland, New York and Rhode Island — they dropped significantly.
The average age of those killed was 14, according to the study, which was coauthored by researchers from Yale New Haven Hospital, the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and the schools of public health at University of Pittsburgh and Brown University.
Advocates for stricter gun laws praised the study, saying it expanded the evidence that gun safety laws save lives.
“We have shown in the past that states that have the strongest laws when it comes to gun policy have a gun violence rate that’s 2.5 times less than the states with the weakest,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “Lawmakers that refuse to take action or further loosen laws are putting kids’ lives at risk.
He also said that gun safety laws had multiple benefits, reducing accidental shootings, while also preventing youth suicides and school shootings. “Three of four school shootings are committed with a weapon taken from the home of the family or a close relative,” Mr. Suplina said.
Please read and take action to oppose Trump’s tyranny:
Earlier this week Donald Trump called for a second civil war at a US military base. This scenario can be resisted and prevented, if we have the courage to listen, interpret, and act. And this Saturday we will have the occasion to act.
The listening is important. The speech was given at the base now known again as Ft. Bragg. The fort was named for a confederate general. It was renamed Ft. Liberty. Under this administration, it was renamed Fort Bragg, now ostensibly to honor another American serviceman, not the confederate general. It is a dishonest pretense that dishonors everyone. The fort is now named again after a confederate general, as Trump made clear. The tradition that is now in fact being honored, that of oathbreakers and traitors.
In Trump’s speech, the existence of the United States is placed in doubt. We are not a country but a divided society in which some of us deserve punishment by others. He made no mention of the world today, nor of any common American interest that might necessitate national defense. There was no concern about threats from China or Russia. Middle Eastern dictatorships, the only countries that Trump singled out, garnered great praise because their leaders gave Trump money. There was no mention of any wars that are actually underway, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Trump invoked battlefields across the decades to create a sense of individual heroism, in which of course the history the the US Army is very rich. But that individual heroism is usually cited by commanders in chief as evidence of a nation that is worthy of defense. No such America figured in Trump’s speech. America did not exist Trump’s speech, except as a cult to him personally.
In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn’t been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.
In his speech, Trump claimed that seizing undocumented migrants in 2025 shows the same courage as fighting in the Revolutionary War, or the First World War, or the Second World War, or Korea or Vietnam. It would have been news to the soldiers at the time that charging a trench or jumping from a plane is no different than ganging up on a graduate student or bullying a middle-aged seamstress.
But here we see the magic of Trump’s rhetoric: he seeks to transform the courage of the past into the cowardice of the future. He is preparing American soldiers to see themselves as heroes when they undertake operations inside the United States against unarmed people, including their fellow citizens.
All of this, of course, trivializes actual US military achievements. The actual battles of our history just become a “show,” to use one of Trump’s keywords. They are deeds performed for the pleasure of a Leader who then invokes them to justify his own permanent power. Denuded of all context, military glory becomes a spectacle into which any meaning can be injected. And he who injects the meaning is he who rules. That is the fascist principle that Trump understands. There is no politics except struggle, and he who can define the enemy in the struggle can stay in power. But whereas historical fascists had an enemy without and an enemy within, Trump only has an enemy within. The world is too much for him. The army is just for dominating Americans.
In his speech, Trump was trying to transform a legacy of battlefield victory around the world into a future willingness to take illegal orders regarding his own policy on the territory of the United States. The defiance of the law was clear. Trump cannot, for example, legally just rename those bases. The forts were named by an act of Congress. And he cannot legally deploy the Marines to Los Angeles. He has no authority to do so. The president is expressly forbidden by law from using the armed forces to implement domestic policies.
Trump defined himself not as a president but as a permanent Leader. In repeatedly mocking his predecessor, he was summoning soldiers to defy the fundamental idea that their service is to the Constitution and not to a given person. “You think this crowd would have showed up for Biden?” Whether or not it is unprecedented, as I believe it is, such mockery certainly dangerous. It suggests that something besides an election, something like individual charisma, some personal right to rule, is what matters. That soldiers should follow Trump because he is Trump, and not for any other reason.
In general, we imagine that the US Army is here to defend us, not to attack us. But summoning soldiers to heckle their fellow Americans is a sign of something quite different. Trump seized the occasion to summon soldiers to join him in mocking the press. Reporters, of course, as the Founders understood, are a critical check on tyranny. They, like protestors, are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was teaching soldiers that society does not matter, and that law does not matter. He “loves” soldiers. He is personally responsible for the pay raises: “I gave you so much money for four years it was crazy.” “We’re giving you an across-the-board raise” This is the way a dictator speaks to a palace guard, or a fascist to a paramilitary.
Trump is putting himself above the army and the army above the country: “we only have a country because we first had an army, the army was first.” That ridiculous: the Continental Army was formed in 1775 from the people, for the very specific and time-limited purpose of ending colonial oppression. Trump wants the armed force to be the end in itself, and freedom to be its enemy. Generally, presidents who speak to soldiers of military glory have had in mind the defense of American freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press and the freedom to assemble. Trump said nothing about freedom, except as a “flame” or a “shield.” He said nothing about rights. There was not a word about democracy.
We are witnessing an attempt at regime change, rife in perversities. It has a historical component: we are to celebrate the oathbreakers and the traitors. It has a fascist component: we are to embrace the present moment as an exception, in which all things are permitted to the Leader. And of course it has an institutional component: soldiers are meant to be the avant-garde of the end of democracy. Instead of treating the army as defenders or freedom, Trump presented soldiers as his personal armed servants, whose job it was to oppress his chosen enemies — inside the United States. Trump was trying to instruct soldiers that their mission was to crush fellow Americans who dared to exercise their rights, such as the right to protest.
Referring to migration as an “invasion,” as Trump did during the speech, is meant to blur the distinction between his immigration policy and a foreign war. But it is also meant to transform the mission of the US Army. The meaningful border here is that between reality and fantasy. If soldiers and others are willing to accept that migration is an “invasion,” then they enter into an alternative reality. Inside that alternative reality, they will see those who do not accept the invasion fantasy as enemies. And this is exactly what Trump called for when he portrayed elected officials in California as collaborators in “an occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
The US Army, like other American institutions, includes people of various backgrounds. It depends heavily on African-Americans and non-citizens. One can try to transform the army into a cult of the Confederacy and a tool to persecute migrants, but this will cause, at a minimum, great friction. Beyond this, using the Army to enforce domestic policy risks ruining its reputation. Deploying the armed forces in cities risks US soldiers killing US civilians. It also risks that provocateurs, including foreign ones, including allies of Trump, will try to kill an American soldier to provoke a disaster. (Trump’s birthday parade seems practically designed for such an incident, by the way.)
Trump will welcome and exploit such situations, of course. He doesn’t have the courage to say things clearly or start conflict directly, but instead sets up others for situations in which they suffer and he profits. The question is whether civil war is the future Army officers and soldiers want. When Trump promises to celebrate Robert E. Lee, he is telling the Army that oath-breakers and traitors will be celebrated in the future. This is not in his gift. Officers who bring the US armed forces to battle American civilians will be remembered by the heirs of a broken republic and as the people who started a second American civil war.
It is clear what Trump is trying to do. He wants to turn everything around. He wants an army that is not a legal institution but a personal paramilitary. He wants it not to defend Americans but to oppress them. He wishes the shame of our national history to become our pride. He wants to transform a republic into a fascist regime by transforming a history of courage into a future of cowardice.
This can only succeed if it goes unchallenged. All of us can think about his words and their implications. Officers and soldiers can remember that not all orders are legal orders. Those in the media can interpret Trump’s speeches clearly rather than just repeating them or seeing them as one side in a partisan dispute. Our courts can name the limits of his authority. And even a Republican Congress can recognize when its powers are being usurped in a way that risks the end of our country.
Though he did not mention the Civil War, Trump did refer to “the sacred soil of Gettysburg.” It is worth recalling Lincoln’s very different sense of the sacrifice of American soldiers in his Gettysburg Address:
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
In the end, and in the beginning, and at all moments of strife, a government of the people, by the people, for the people depends upon the awareness and the actions of all of us. A democracy only exists if a people exist, and a people only exists in individuals’ awareness of one another of itself and of their need to act together. This weekend Trump plans a celebration of American military power as a celebration of himself on his birthday — military dictatorship nonsense. This is a further step towards a different kind of regime. It can be called out, and it can be overwhelmed.
Thousands of Americans across the land, many veterans among them, have worked hard to organize protests this Saturday — against tyranny, for freedom, for government of the people, by the people, for the people. Join them if you can. No Kings Day is June 14th.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that directed President Donald Trump to return control of National Guard troops to California after he deployed them there following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.
The court said it would hold a hearing on the matter on June 17. The ruling came only hours after a federal judge’s order was to take effect at noon Friday.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had asked the judge for an emergency stop to troops helping carry out immigration raids, had praised the earlier ruling.
“Today was really about a test of democracy, and today we passed the test,” Newsom said in a news conference before the appeals court decision.
The White House had called Breyer’s order “unprecedented” and said it “puts our brave federal officials in danger.”
A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The restraining order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which takes effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of an American city, a move has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country.
“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote of Mr. Trump’s orders. But he gave the administration a chance to appeal.
A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to “return control” of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom after the president issued an extraordinary order deploying them to Los Angeles over the weekend.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, presiding over the case, granted California’s request for a temporary restraining order, granting the federal government a stay until Friday to appeal the ruling.
Breyer had expressed skepticism at a hearing Thursday over the matter, questioning whether President Trump had operated within his authority.
“We’re talking about the president exercising his authority, and of course, the president is limited in his authority,” Breyer said. “That’s the difference between the president and King George.”
“We live in response to a monarchy,” the judge continued, adding: “Line drawing is important, because it establishes a system of process.
In the lengthy decision, Breyer wrote that he is “troubled by the implication” inherent in Trump administration’s argument “that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”
It was inevitable. And now it’s happening. During his first term, Trump repeatedly encouraged violence. He told police officers in New York not to be so nice when they arrest people. He asked “his” generals if they could shoot protestors in the legs. He broadcast fake videos showing him beating up a cartoon character labeled CNN. He urged his crowds at rallies to beat up protestors and said he would pay their legal fees. He wants to seem like a real man, a tough guy. But don’t forget that this tough guy dodged the draft five times with a podiatrist’s note about bone spurs in his feet.
This week, his troubles were mounting. There was the very public split with Musk, who dropped hints about Trump’s name in the still confidential Epstein files. There was Elon’s claim that Trump would have lost the election and control of the House without Elon’s help. What kind of “help”? There was the tariff mess, which was causing a global economic disruption and predictions of inflation. And Trump’s poll numbers were plummeting.
What a perfect time to send in large numbers of ICE agents to immigrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles! Send them to Home Depot, where immigrants cluster in search of work–not the “criminals, rapists, and murderers” he warned us about, but laborers looking for work.
Voila! Their friends, families, and neighbors turned out to protest the ICE raids, and all at once there are crowds and people waving Mexican flags (a big mistake, they should have waved American flags). The situation was volatile but there was no reason to think that local and state police couldn’t handle it.
Trump is shrewd: he saw his chance to distract public attention from his failing policies, and he took it. Without bothering to contact Governor Newsom, Trump mobilized the National Guard. He ordered 2,000 into the troubled neighborhood. Then he sent in another 2,000, plus 700 Marines.
Only the Governor can call up his state’s National Guard, except in the most exceptional situations (the last time it happened was 1965, when President Johnson mobilized the National Guard in Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators because Governor George Wallace refused to do so).
It is even more unusual for a President to call in the military to oppose ordinary people, which is normally handled by state and local police. There is an act-the Posse Comitatus Act–that specifically forbids the Army and Air Force from acting against civilians on American soil. A different law, 10 U.S. Code 275, forbids Navy and Marine Corps members from the same thing. Trump claims that the anti-ICE protests are an insurrection, which allows him to call in the Marines. Legal scholars disagree, but most think he overreached and that there was no insurrection in Los Angeles.
Indeed, the large show of force drew an even larger crowd to the protests and made it more dangerous. Nonetheless, there seem to be more military at the scene than protestors.
Miraculously, no one has been killed (unlike the genuinely violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, where Trump rioters viciously beat police officers and several people died). He sat back and watched the insurrection on television and is now considering whether to reimburse them for their legal expenses after being imprisoned for engaging in insurrection.
Trump said on national television that “many people” had been killed during the protests (not true) and that if he had not sent in the troops, the city would have been “obliterated.” This is nonsense. The clash between the protesters and the military is contained to a few blocks of a very large city.
Today, there were spontaneous peaceful rallies in many cities to show support for the demonstrators in Los Angeles.
The best response: show up for a “No Kings” rally on Saturday. Check the website http://www.nokings.org to find one or create one where you live. Be peaceable. Sing. Dance. Bring American flags. The Constitution protects the right to assemble peacefully.
Trump is not only diverting attention from his monstrous One Ugly Bill, he is laying the groundwork for martial law and dictatorship.
Gary Legum writes at the blog “Wonkette.” Legum was appalled when he heard that ABC had suspended its reporter Terry Moran for posting a tweet about the hatefulness of Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller. Miller prides himself on his open hatred of immigrants and his eagerness to expel millions of them. He is ultra-MAGA and proud of it.
ABC punished Moran because he told the truth.
By the way, there is a reference in this piece to Stephen Miller’s wife Katie. I have not seen any reason to mention the flurry of reports that she has left her government job to work as a personal assistant for Elon Musk. Did she leave Stephen? Did she move to Texas with Elon? what about their children? Are they in DC or Starland, Texas?
Legum writes:
Something happened to ABC News reporter Terry Moran over the weekend: He was brought low by a brutal attack of unvarnished honesty.
Sir, really. Honesty? In Donald Trump’s America?
Even better, Moran’s honesty was an assessment of the character — or complete and utter lack thereof — of Stephen Miller, the irredeemably evil sack of donkey vomit who does whatever it takes to stay on Donald Trump’s good side, all so he can continue to hold the power — as shadow president, basically — to destroy lives for no other reason than his parents apparently never hugged him and told him he was worthy of love.
Which, quite frankly, can you blame them? We imagine raising Stephen Miller involved mysterious supernatural happenings around the house and nannies hanging themselves from the top floor of the family manor in full view of the guests at Miller’s birthday party.
The trouble started, as it so often does, with a tweet. On Saturday, Moran posted his opinion, for which your Wonkette congratulates him even though we know this sort of thing is frowned upon by the giants of journalism:
The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism.
Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy.
But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller.
It’s not brains. It’s bile.
Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater.
You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.
Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.
None of this is news about Stephen Miller to anyone who has ever known him, going back to his high school days when he once got booed off a stage for excoriating his fellow students for being nice to the school’s janitors. A journalist who wrote a book about Miller during Trump’s first term titled it Hatemonger, and we doubt many people blinked an eye.
Shoot, the man’s own family disowned him, and his childhood rabbi called him out in a sermon on Rosh Hashanah. Do you know how horrible of a person you have to be to get a rabbi to denounce you from the bema during the High Holidays? That’s an honor usually reserved for biblical villains and Adolf Hitler, and we are not glibly invoking Godwin’s Law when we say that. We have sat through a lot of High Holiday sermons.
Moran deleted the tweet at some point, but the damage was done. The White House jumped all over Moran in defense of Miller. Vice President JD Vance called the tweet “an absolutely vile smear” and declared that Miller is motivated by “a love of country.” White House Press Nazi Karoline Leavitt, perhaps forgetting who she works for and what kind of crap he puts out every day, called it “unhinged and unacceptable” in a tweet.
Then the press secretary, her face shining like a highly polished apple, went on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show and said that “ABC is gonna have to answer” for Moran’s comments:
Leavitt: “ABC is gonna have to answer for what their so-called journalist put out on twitter … we have reached out to ABC. They have said they will be taking action, so we will see what they do … hopefully this journalist will either be suspended or terminated.”
Miller himself called Moran a radical “adopting a journalist’s pose.” Oh no, was he so upset he couldn’t eat his usual Sunday brunch consisting of a live bat?
Moran posted his screed at 12:06 a.m. Sunday morning, the “drunk texting your ex because you’ve been drinking all night and are now all caught up in your lonely feels” hour. Nothing good ever comes of picking up your phone at that hour.
“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” a network spokesperson said. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”
ABC should try being like Wonkette, whose only standard is the truth. Then Moran could have called Stupid Nosferatu whatever he wanted: hideous shit goblin, Skeletor, fascist taint shavings, a lower life form than the crud under the fridge, a loser husband who rumors are abounding may have been cucked by Elon Musk, a motherfucking shanda fur di goyim … the list goes on and on and on.
We are not in the habit of giving ABC any advice, but we think their response to Leavitt’s demand that they “answer for” Moran should be two middle fingers raised high, accompanied by a sneer that could melt the press secretary’s face off. It is way past time for high-level journalists to be consistently frank about what Stephen Miller is and what he’s doing, instead of couching his vile bigotry and single-minded pursuit of extremist actions as some sort of polite disagreement between right and left over immigration policy.
The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) would create a $5 billion federal tax-credit scholarship program through a tax shelter for wealthy individuals.
The bill would provide minimally regulated scholarship-granting organizations with a great deal of discretion over how federal education funds are spent.
A hypothetical scenario illustrates the possibility of waste, fraud, and discriminatory behaviors.
The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) continues to move, quietly, towards becoming one of America’s costliest, most significant federal education programs. Now part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ECCA would create a federal tax-credit scholarship program that’s unprecedented in scope and scale. It has flown under the radar, though, and remains confusing to many observers.
Recently, a colleague and I showed how ECCA is poised to redistribute funds from poor and rural communities to wealthy and non-rural communities. A study from the Urban Institute drew similar conclusions. Since those pieces were published, ECCA—then a standalone bill—has passed through the House of Representatives and now moves to the Senate. ECCA’s fate remains uncertain, which makes this as good a time as any to examine its potential implications.
How would ECCA work?
ECCA’s stealthiness is partly due to the confusing nature of tax-credit scholarship programs. These programs move money in circuitous ways to avoid the legal and political hurdles that confront vouchers. Tax-credit scholarship programs like ECCA aren’t quite private school voucher programs, but they’re first cousins.
In a voucher program, a government gives money (a voucher) to a family, which the family can use to pay for private school tuition or other approved expenses. With a tax-credit scholarship, it’s not that simple. Governments offer tax credits to individuals and/or corporations that donate to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs). These SGOs then distribute funds (“scholarships”) to families.
The U.S. already has 22 tax-credit scholarship programs, but they’re relatively modest, state-level programs. ECCA is different. ECCA would create a massive, federal tax-credit scholarship program, operating across all 50 states, with a current price tag of about $5 billion in the first year (down from $10 billion in the bill’s earlier draft). It offers an extremely generous tax credit. Individuals get a full, 1:1 tax credit (not just a deduction) for their contributions, which fully offsets their contributions. In other words, these “donors” don’t actually give up any money—hence the quotation marks. On top of that, ECCA allows individuals to donate marketable securities (e.g., stocks) rather than cash. This provides an avenue to treat ECCA as a tax shelter and avoid paying capital gains taxes. More on that in a moment.
Most students would be eligible for a scholarship, with the exception of those from households that earn more than three times their area’s median gross income. (More on that in a moment, too.) The list of qualified expenses covers everything from private school tuition to online educational materials.
Rather than go through all of the bill’s details, let’s take a look at a scenario that illuminates what this program could do. Remarkably, this scenario appears—to my eye, at least—fully compliant with the House bill (even if the characters are a bit overstated).
A hypothetical scenario to illustrate some of ECCA’s risks
A ‘donor’ who benefits from ECCA’s tax shelter
Let’s imagine a billionaire, Billy, who couldn’t care less about K-12 education but cares a whole lot about his own wealth. Billy hears about ECCA from an acquaintance who tells him about how much money Billy could save by “donating” to an SGO. Billy’s adjusted gross income (AGI) was $20 million last year. That means, according to ECCA, that he’s eligible to donate $2 million to an SGO this year (10% of his AGI).
Let’s walk through the math for Billy’s donation. Billy is looking to give $2 million in stock shares to an SGO. He bought these shares a few years ago for $1 million and then they doubled in value. That means that Billy’s earnings are subject to long-term capital gains tax if he sells the stock. With his AGI, that would be 23.8% in federal taxes plus another 4.7% or so in state taxes (depending on where he lives). In other words, if Billy sold the stocks today and kept the funds for himself, he’d owe about $285,000 in combined federal and state taxes on his $1 million in earnings (28.5% of $1 million).
By donating the $2 million in stock to an SGO, not only does Billy get his entire $2 million back as a tax credit; he also dodges those capital gains taxes. He’s a billionaire who is $285,000 wealthier for having made this supposed donation. (For a detailed illustration of how this works—and some nice figures—I’d recommend this piece from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.)
A scholarship-granting organization with extraordinary leeway in how to direct ECCA funds
Now, let’s get back to that SGO. Billy’s acquaintance, Fred, lives in the same town as Billy, which is one of the wealthiest areas in the United States. In fact, Fred set up the SGO, looking to capture ECCA funds within their shared community—and, just maybe, for himself. Like Billy, Fred doesn’t particularly care about K-12 education. He does have a penchant for fraud, though, along with a strong distaste for Republicans.
It might seem that Fred’s SGO couldn’t distribute funds to families in their ultra-wealthy area, since ECCA has income restrictions for scholarship recipients. That’s not the case. ECCA restricts eligibility to households with an income not greater than 300% of their area’s median income. In Fred and Billy’s town, with its soaring household incomes, even multimillionaire families with $500,000 in annual income are eligible. In more modest (and rural) areas, the cutoffs aren’t nearlyso high.
So, Fred is looking to give scholarship money to some wealthy families in his hometown. Notably, ECCA doesn’t limit the amount of money that he can give to any one recipient. ECCA just requires that he provide scholarships to at least two students—who, between them, attend at least two different schools—and that he not earmark the funds for any particular student. Fred offers students $100,000 apiece for supplemental tutoring. That might seem like a lot, but, hey, this is high-end tutoring.
A vendor with little oversight or accountability
In fact, Fred stipulates that the funds must be spent at a new tutoring shop, High-End Tutoring, just created by his buddy, a former teacher. ECCA seems to allow that. ECCA also allows Fred to take a nice cut for himself for running the SGO: 10% of the SGO’s total receipts.
No one really knows the arrangement that Fred and his tutoring friend have, if they have one, because there are hardly any transparency or accountability provisions in ECCA (aside from a requirement to obtain annual financial and compliance audits). We also won’t know if High-End Tutoring provides any educational value, because that’s not part of ECCA either. ECCA’s proponents have claimed there’s accountability to the SGO donors, who want to see their generous donations being put to good use. Billy, though, is enjoying his $285,000 money grab and content to leave Fred alone until it’s time for next year’s donation.
An invitation to discriminate—and an attempt to keep local and state governments from intervening
Fred does have one requirement of his own for High-End Tutoring that he doesn’t need to hide. High-End Tutoring isn’t going to serve any children of Republican parents. All students must complete an attestation form—stating that they and their parents are progressive—before receiving any tutoring services from this publicly funded vendor. Across town, another SGO leader is formally excluding LGBTQ+ children and children of LGBTQ+ parents from their pool of scholarship recipients.
ECCA, in its current form, seems to allow all of this, as objectionable as it may seem. And it’s not just an issue with SGOs funding tutoring companies or other supplemental services. Similar issues could arise with private schools, especially in states without strong anti-discrimination protections.
From hypotheticals to reality
The scenario above might seem ridiculous or caricatured, and to some extent it probably is. But the point is, it’s allowable under the proposed legislation, and we should be realistic about how much fraud, waste, and bad behavior a program like ECCA would invite.
Should we not expect wealthy stockowners to jump at the opportunity to exploit ECCA’s tax shelter? Is it unreasonable to think that many of these wealthy donors will look to benefit their own communities through their donations? Have we not seen bad actors creep in when governments offer large checks with hardly any accountability or strings attached?
This isn’t some tiny, insignificant program either. This is a $5 billion federal program that, because of a “high-use calendar year” provision in ECCA, is almost certain to grow 5% annually. In fact, the cost is likely to be considerably higher than thatdue to the foregone capital gains tax revenue. That’s not quite the size of the behemoth federal K-12 programs—Title I ($18.4 billion in FY 2024) and IDEA ($15.5 billion)—but it’s not all that far off.
And let’s be clear about cost, because ECCA certainly isn’t paid for by the contributions of generous donors. Tax credits are would-be revenue that the IRS is no longer collecting. That money is coming from somewhere else in the budget, whether it’s cuts in education spending, cuts to Medicaid or other social services, tax hikes, or increased debt.
This bill would introduce the most significant and costliest new federal education program in decades. It has virtually no quality-control measures, transparency provisions, protections against discrimination, or evidence to suggest that it’s likely to improve educational outcomes. It’s very likely to redirect funds from poor (and rural) areas to wealthy areas.
And, in its current form, ECCA leaves a whole lot of room for waste, fraud, and abuse.
You probably know that Florida’s GOP politicians have taken a wrecking ball to the state’s university system. And the narrative is that they’re on a noble crusade to exorcise evil, “woke” ideology from college campuses.
But if you believe that’s the only goal here, you’ve been duped. This isn’t about politicians going after liberal doctrines nearly as much as it’s about them going after tax dollars.
They’ve turned the university system into a political spoils system where politicians with no higher-ed experience can score lucrative higher-ed jobs for themselves.
It’s been going on for a while now, but the grift was fully exposed this past week. That’s when it was revealed that one of the political has-beens fuming about diversity — as a supposed reason to deny the University of Florida presidency to a qualified applicant — had secretly made a play to try to get the $3 million-a-year job for himself.
See, you have to separate the theater from the grift. The theater was a bunch of privileged guys griping about the concept of diversity and inclusion. The grift was one of those same guys making a secretive play for the very job he was griping about.
More about that in a moment, but first, let’s remember where this all started — at New College of Florida with Richard Corcoran. Two years ago, the former House Speaker craved a fat, higher-ed paycheck. The problem was that Corcoran had as much higher-ed experience as my dead cat, Furball.
So to distract from his lack of qualifications, Corcoran fumed — about DEI, CRT and other scary-sounding acronyms. It was red meat for the trolls. And Corcoran laughed all the way to the bank. He got a $1 million deal to run a tiny college with 698 students. Elementary school principals oversee more pupils.
Then Corcoran and Co. invited other political has-beens to feed at the New College trough. They gave a former Senate president a $500-an-hour legal contract, the governor’s former spokesman a $15,000-a-month PR contract and the wife of the former Republican Party of Florida chairman $175,000 to run the school’s foundation.
With the chow bell rung, the politicians came running. Former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska scored a $10 million deal for a short-lived and disastrous tenure at UF where the student newspaper discovered he’d quickly blown through $17 million in public money, including $38,000 he spent on a sushi bar.
Lieutenant Gov. Jeanette Nunez snagged the top spot at Florida International University. A cable-company lobbyist friendly with the administration is in line to lead FAMU. At one college, they had to actually remove the requirement that the president have an advanced degree so that they could give the job to Fred Hawkins, a GOP legislator who lacked one.
But then this past week, the scheme was fully exposed in cringe-worthy fashion.
The scene was the Board of Governors meeting in Orlando where appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis were once again fuming about the alleged evils of diversity and inclusion. Their reason this time was to try to deny the UF presidency to former University of Michigan President Santa J. Ono.
Somehow, a qualified candidate had actually advanced through the secretive application process — and that would not be tolerated.
So the political appointees accused Ono of all kinds of terrible things like embracing equality and believing in science. Former House Speaker Paul Renner led the anti-woke war.
But then one board member who’d apparently heard enough posturing went off-script. Eric Silagy, the former CEO of Florida Power and Light, asked if any of his fellow board members — the ones savaging Ono for being too woke — had applied for the very job Ono was seeking. Yes, responded board chairman Mori Hosseini. “Paul Renner.”
It turned out the very guy claiming Florida needed an anti-woke warrior in this $3 million-a-year position had been salivating over the post. Renner became visibly enraged when exposed. He indignantly responded that he’d only inquired about the job because other people suggested he do so and that he’d since decided not to accept the high-paying job even if it was offered to him. Sure, Mr. Speaker. Your nobility is noted.
Most of the time, qualified candidates like Ono don’t even get a shot. But occasionally, well-intentioned leaders at individual schools try to give them one — as trustees at Florida Atlantic University did two years ago when they nominated Vice Admiral Sean Buck, the superintendent of the United States Naval Academy, to be FAU’s president.
That’s how these folks treat these positions.
DeSantis would later admit in a moment of surprising candor that he only supported Fine because other GOP legislators disliked Fine and wanted him gone. “They wanted to get him out of the Legislature,” DeSantis said. “So they asked me to put him up for Florida Atlantic president, and I did.”
But Buck didn’t stand a chance in this environment. DeSantis allies savaged the respected admiral’s reputation so that yet another GOP legislator, Randy Fine, could have a shot at the job.
Fine and DeSantis later had a falling out, and Fine didn’t get the gig. But the rules of the game were clear: Qualified applicants need not apply. An irony is that former politicians actually can become impressive university leaders. Florida State University President John Thrasher, a former GOP house speaker, was one of them. I respected him. So did many others.
But Thrasher, who sadly passed away last week, was a different kind of man than the Florida politicians of today. He was a statesman — not someone willing to savage others’ reputation simply to enrich himself.
DOGE (or DOGS, as I prefer to call them) just won the authority to see your most important personal data, thanks to the rightwing bloc of six on the SupremeCourt.,
The six Republicans on the Court claim to be conservatives. They are not. Some of the six claim to be “originalists,” ruling in accord with the wishes of the Founding Fathers. Nonsense.
Who are these people that Elon Musk left behind? No one knows for sure. Were they confirmed by the U.S. Senate? No. What are their credentials? No one knows for certain. What right do these shadowy people have to know our personal data? They are not a government agency. They are friends of Elon.
This decision gives open access to our records by shadowy figures whose purposes are hidden.
Are they building a data base for the next election? Will the data be used to blackmail people?
Diane Ravitch's blog 