<[Event "11th World Open"] [Site "New York NY"]
[Date "1983.07.??"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Soltis, Andrew"]
[Black "Zaltsman, Vitaly"]
[ECO "B89"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "First Boston Futurity"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1981.04.??"]
[EventDate "1981"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rizzitano, James"]
[Black "Johnson, Joel"]
[ECO "A25"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<President Donald Trump said Monday that he will “lead” an effort to turf out a Republican lawmaker who refused to show his support for a funding bill.

Many of the president’s own devout followers declined to join him.

Trump fumed in a post on his Truth Social platform that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) “SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him.”

He added a call to the people of Kentucky to stand against congressman, asking: “DO I HAVE ANY TAKERS???”

Trump’s attacks came after Massie announced earlier in the day that he would not support a short term spending bill, put forward by House Speaker Mike Johnson, that would keep the government running through end of September.

In announcing his position, Massie said in a social media post that he couldn’t vote to fund the government given that Trump’s billionaire lieutenant Elon Musk, leader of the cost cutting task force DOGE, has said federal spending is rife with “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Massie’s more-MAGA-than-Trump stance earned the backing of many on the right who are, more often than not, in the president’s corner.

“Trump can be wrong about things,” said conservative commentator Matt Walsh, in a social media post. “He’s wrong about Massie. It’s okay to say that.”

He added, in a follow-up: “You can disagree with Massie about [Johnson’s continuing resolution bill]. That’s fine. But the idea that he needs to be ousted from congress is just asinine.”

Conservative talk radio show host Jesse Kelly wrote, in a social media post, that Massie and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), another fiscal hawk who has clashed with GOP leadership, would not lose primaries “because they do what they promised their voters they would do.”

He then suggested Republicans in Washington could either have principles or be Trump lapdogs: “There are two routes to GOP job security: 1. Do what you promised or 2. Follow Trump around washing his golf balls.”

Right-wing YouTuber and pizzagate conspiracist Ian Carroll suggested the president attacked Massie because his point about Trump’s own White House adviser Musk repeatedly claiming spending is rife with fraud “is obvious and embarrassing for Trump.”

Dozens more prominent and everyday conservative social media users echoed their views.

“Whoever told Donald Trump to post about Thomas Massie just now should be fired,” wrote Evan Kilgore, a Holocaust denying one-time ambassador for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. “I’ve never seen this quick of a push back and condemnation against something Trump has said by his most loyal followers.”

“Trying to primary Thomas Massie is a mistake,” wrote Philip Anderson, who was charged with participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“It will fail and people will hold it against you. I support both Trump and Massie. But that’s just the reality of it.”

Trump, in his Truth Social post, complained that Massie was “an automatic ‘NO’ vote on just about everything, despite the fact that he has always voted for Continuing Resolutions in the past.”

The libertarian-leaning Massie—who was endorsed by the Libertarian Party in his state—has frequently clashed with Trump and Johnson, whose speakership he opposed, by withholding support when his party failed to satisfy his hawkish fiscal views.

“He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight,” Trump added, in his post. “He reminds me of Liz Chaney [sic] before her historic, record breaking fall (loss!). The people of Kentucky won’t stand for it, just watch.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who showed a regular willingness to criticize Trump and her party, was ousted by a Trump-backed challenger during a 2022 primary.

Johnson, for his part, on Tuesday directly refuted Trump’s threat. Asked whether he agreed with the president that Massie should be primaried, Johnson said, “Look, I’m in the incumbent protection program here. That’s what I do [as] speaker of the House.”

“Thomas and I have had disagreements but I consider Thomas Massie a friend,” the speaker told reporters at a press conference. “He’s a thoughtful guy.” But he added, “I just vehemently disagree with his position, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Trump has tried—and failed—to turf out Massie before, railing against him during a 2020 primary that he comfortably won.

Massie welcomed another challenge from Trumpworld on Monday.

Trump did find one notable supporter from within his inner circle. Chris LaCivita, who co-managed the president’s 2024 election campaign, tweeted “Tick tock Tommie,” as if to suggest a countdown clock for Massie’s ousting had commenced.

<During his 2025 State of the Union address, President Donald Trump claimed that the Biden Administration created major economic problems for the United States. And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claims that economically, former President Joe Biden "left (Trump) a pile of poop."

But in fact, the U.S. enjoyed record-low unemployment rates and robust job creation during much of Biden's presidency. The national unemployment rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), was only 4.1 percent in December 2024 (Biden's last full month in office). In January 2023, U.S. unemployment was a mere 3.4 percent — the lowest since May 1969, CNBC reported.

In a biting column published on March 11, MSNBC's Paul Waldman argues that Trump and his allies are pointing the finger at a former president while pushing bad economic policies that could lead to a painful "collapse."

"While Trump and his allies alternately deflect blame and insist that everything will be fine," Waldman warns, "there's one thing they will never admit: Almost everything the (Trump) Administration and congressional Republicans are doing to the economy is making a collapse more likely. They seem to know it, but either they don't care or they're hoping that the damage will be limited while they go about gutting the federal government."

Waldman continues, "For the last 35 years, over six presidencies, the U.S. economy has followed a cycle: A Republican president presides over a recession, a Democratic president gets elected and cleans up the mess; then, a Republican gets elected and screws everything up all over again. It was a good bet the cycle would continue with the second Trump presidency; the only surprise is that it’s happening so quickly."

The Trump policies that risk creating a deep recession, according to Waldman, range from steep new tariffs to draconian cuts to the federal workforce.

"Trump's constant toggling on tariffs has left businesses uncertain about whether to invest and consumers nervous about renewed inflation, since tariffs are essentially a sales tax on imported goods," Waldman observes. "If they go into force in full, the effects could be widespread, including pushing up the price of houses and cars. Probably in anticipation, consumer confidence is down, and consumer spending recently dropped for the first time in almost two years. The stock market has been tumbling, with Monday, (March 10) the worst day on Wall Street this year."

Waldman stresses that mass layoffs of federal workers will inevitably hurt the private sector in a variety of ways.

"The (Trump) Administration's planned layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government workers are in and of themselves a substantial hit to the economy," Waldman warns. "What hasn't gotten as much attention is the likely effects of Musk's canceling federal contracts and programs willy-nilly. Most Americans probably don't realize that while there are about 3 million federal employees, including postal workers, even more private-sector jobs depend on federal contracts and grants. They include everything from airplane machinists to medical researchers to child care specialists to food service workers.">

<[Event "59th New England Open"] [Site "Boxborough Mass"]
[Date "1999.09.05"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Tylevich, David"]
[Black "Chase, Christopher"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B06"]
[WhiteElo "2353"]
[BlackElo "2390"]

<[Event "59th New England Open"] [Site "Boxborough Mass"]
[Date "1999.09.06"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Chase, Christopher"]
[Black "Curdo, John"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C61"]
[WhiteElo "2390"]
[BlackElo "2361"]

<Even residents of House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) deep-red congressional district are voicing their displeasure with House Republicans' efforts to gut funding for Medicaid.

NBC News reported Wednesday that rural Louisiana voters in the southwestern portion of the state that Johnson represents are now calling on the speaker to prioritize the program that provides health insurance for low-income Americans. The Rev. Leroy McClelland told the network he has several medical issues and depends on safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps — both of which would be cut in the Republican budget — to make ends meet.

"People can’t do without it," McClelland said. "So I would tell [Congress] to help us out. Help us. People are hurting out here. And you may be from Louisiana, but you’re the House speaker. Cross the aisle. Work together to do whatever you got to do. That’s my message."

According to NBC, approximately one in four residents under the age of 65 in Johnson's district rely on Medicaid for health insurance. And roughly one in five residents depend on food stamps in order to afford groceries. The budget resolution that passed the House last month on a party-line vote would cut Medicaid by $880 billion, while food stamp spending would be slashed by $230 billion.

At the same time, the Republican budget package would expand Trump's 2017 tax cuts through Fiscal Year 2035, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost $4.5 trillion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) said previously that legislation was "skewed to the rich, expensive and failed to deliver on its promises." The CBPP estimated that the richest households would get more than triple the tax cuts that lower and middle-class households would get.

Vinton, Louisiana resident Summer Stinson told NBC that she worried about whether she would be able to afford health insurance if the budget her congressman shepherded through the House of Representatives became law.

“My children are on Medicaid. So yes, I do. I do fear that very much, and they make it to where insurance isn’t really affordable with our companies,” Stinson said. “I don’t know what we would do without it.”>

<A conservative former radio host and editor-in-chief of The Bulwark penned a scathing — and at times obscene — takedown of the Republican Party, which he said has been transformed into a rubber-stamping "cult" that elected a convicted felon for president despite a laundry list of warning signs, and left Americans holding the bag.

Charlie Sykes, an NBC and MSNBC contributor, author and longtime conservative talk radio host, wrote on his Substack Wednesday that "TDS" — President Donald Trump's acronym for "Trump Derangement Syndrome" — "turns out to have been prophetic."

Sykes noted that he sounded the alarm about Trump in 2015, calling the then-candidate “a cartoon version of every left-wing media stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right.”

But he and other never-Trump Republicans were roundly dismissed, "accused of suffering from TDS." They were told that despite his warts — he was brash and crude — his policies were more or less in line with "conventional conservatives," supporting tax cuts and deregulation.

Republicans, Sykes said, then returned Trump to power — "angrier, more bitter, and still unburdened by either principles or guardrails."

"You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. W*F did you think would happen?" Sykes raged.

"Now look at you, with the chaos bubbling all around you. On again, off again, pointless trade wars with our allies; endless graft; a slash and burn through the government that endangers everything from air travel to Social Security; pardons for rioters and crooked politicians; assaults on the rule of law and free speech; the abandonment of allies; and now a crumbling stock market," he continued.

"What you called Trump Derangement Syndrome turns out to have been a warning — and a prophecy. And you ignored it, you cowardly, ignorant, servile scum," Sykes railed.>

<[Event "Boylston CC Championship"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1999.09.08"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Orsher, Ilya"]
[Black "Godin, Eric J"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "B06"]
[WhiteElo "1996"]
[BlackElo "2200"]