<....More states propose adopting legal personhood for embryos, abortion-homicide laws

Many state abortion bans include an exemption from criminal prosecution for the pregnant person, but women who have had abortions have been prosecuted under other laws. A Nebraska teenager was sentenced to 90 days in jail after taking abortion pills her mother ordered online for burning and burying the fetal remains, under a law related to the removal of human remains.

But for the past three years, an extremist faction of the anti-abortion movement has been trying to apply homicide charges to pregnant people in order to further curb abortion rates that have continued to climb, with the availability of abortion pills. This year, “equal protection” model bills crafted with the help of groups like Abolitionists Rising and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, were introduced in several states, including: Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Most of these bills died in committee, but activists said they’ve seen more support from state lawmakers than in any other year.

“So far this year, 122 state lawmakers have sponsored equal protection bills, easily eclipsing every other past session,” said Bradley Pierce, a constitutional attorney and president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, in an email. He said 16 such bills were introduced in 14 states this year. “We had 21 initial bill sponsors in both Georgia and Texas, as well as 17 in Idaho. We also had 16 lawmakers vote for the bill on the floor of the North Dakota House, which is a new record.”

Pierce noted that recently the Oklahoma Republican Party censured four state lawmakers who voted against one of these bills in committee. He said these laws should not apply to miscarriages but that it would be under states’ criminal justice systems to handle cases of “suspected prenatal homicide.”

T. Russell Hunter, the executive director of Abolitionists Rising, based in Norman, Oklahoma, says induced abortions are indistinguishable from homicide, and he blames the more mainstream anti-abortion movement for opposing bills his organization pushes, which would subject women to homicide charges. A father who says he lost two children to miscarriage, Hunter said spontaneous miscarriages and stillbirths should not be prosecuted like abortions. But he supports investigations depending upon if the pregnant person used drugs, how they disposed of the fetal remains, and perceptions around their emotions.

“I don’t think that all miscarriages need to be investigated,” Hunter said. “One, people who actually have miscarriages are terribly sad. You know immediately; it’s not like you have to investigate this person.”

Students for Life of America CEO Kristian Hawkins calls the abortion abolitionists “pro-prosecutionists” and says they are detrimental to the anti-abortion movement. The organization did not respond to an interview request, but on her podcast, Hawkins said women should not be prosecuted for having abortions — until culture and more laws have changed....>

<....“There’s those who say prosecute women and abortionists now. There’s those who say prosecute the abortionist now and perhaps women later, after culture and laws are changed. And then there’s a third class of folks that’ll say never prosecute women but you can prosecute abortionists now or later,” Hawkins said. “The vast majority of us, including myself, in the pro-life movement are in that mid-category, because that makes the most logical sense. It allows us to move the ball forward in good faith to save as many lives as we can right now while working to change culture, elect actual political leaders who will agree with us.”

More states are passing laws that could potentially lead to investigations at the same time that a federal judge recently struck down a federal health privacy rule for legal abortion care. West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey recently signed into law House Bill 2871, which expands the vehicular homicide offense to include aggravated vehicular homicide and clarifies that victims can include embryos and fetuses. The West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Association recently said women who miscarry are not required to notify law enforcement or face potential criminal prosecution, after a prosecutor warned that residents who miscarry could face criminal charges under the state’s strict abortion ban.

At least 38 bills containing personhood language have been introduced across 24 states this year, according to a new report from the State Innovation Exchange and Guttmacher Institute, both of which support abortion rights. Personhood language in some state laws has allowed prosecutors to push for harsher sentences when pregnant women are killed, abused or injured. But the laws have also allowed women to be prosecuted for child endangerment for substance use while pregnant. And experts say these laws could also enable states to force medical interventions against a pregnant person’s will.

Moving in the opposite direction, this year, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law the Dignity in Pregnancy Loss Act, to prevent the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes, outside of unlawful or suspicious circumstances, similar to California’s. It also requires jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers to report pregnancy losses to the state annually.>

Yeah, we know your raison d'etre is persecuting those who have no-one in their corner, <fredzhopnik>, then playing victim when others fight back, but nothing compels you to <stalk> anyone.

Capisce?

<DONALD TRUMP SURE DOES love to hate California.

Since taking office, he has blocked the state’s tight vehicle emission standards from taking effect, attacked its public schools over trans athletes and “DEI” issues, repeatedly threatened to withhold disaster relief after the devastating forest fires, and tried to yank federal financing from if California doesn’t do more to enforce his immigration agenda.1

All of that is on top of commandeering the state’s National Guard—and calling in the Marines—to quell protests against the immigration crackdown.

Of course, beating up on California is nothing new for Trump, or for his allies. The state has been a conservative bête noire for decades, thanks to its leading role in causes like same-sex marriage and environmental protection. Today its embrace of immigrants and ties to Hollywood liberalism make it a symbol for everything the MAGA movement believes is wrong with America—a place to be denigrated and punished with rhetoric and, increasingly, with policy.

But the attacks on California have become so familiar it’s easy to miss that they are a sign of a broader shift away from what has been a bedrock GOP principle: states’ rights.

This is no small thing. The danger of federal overreach has been a staple of Republican rhetoric for most of the modern political era, deployed in order to block everything from the landmark civil rights efforts of the 1950s and ’60s to the environmental and consumer-protection laws of the ’70s and ’80s. More recently, warnings about too much federal power figured prominently in arguments Republicans made against the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which they said imposed a national solution for health care on states that didn’t want it.

You can still hear versions of those arguments, especially in courtrooms when red states challenge older federal regulations put in place by Democratic administrations. But these days you’re more likely to find Trump and MAGA Republicans on the other side of the federalism divide.

Instead of trying to curb the power of Washington, they’re deploying it so they can impose their governing vision on recalcitrant states—through the kind of actions Trump has been taking against California and, they hope, through the legislation they are now trying to get through Congress.

THAT LEGISLATION IS THE One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the House passed in May and the Senate is debating.

The biggest spending cuts in the bill are to Medicaid. And the biggest chunk of the Medicaid cuts are from new “work requirements” under which enrollees could not qualify for the program unless they demonstrated that they have a job, are engaged in another qualifying activity (like community service) or have a valid reason for not seeking work (like caregiving responsibility for a young child).

Medicaid is a joint federal-state program: Washington provides the majority of funding and sets parameters for how it should work, then leaves administration to the states, which have to kick in the rest of the funds. The arrangement has always given states some flexibility, including through waivers from the Department of Health and Human Services that states can seek if they can demonstrate what they want to do with Medicaid is consistent with the program’s overall goals.

Republican state officials from more conservative parts of the country have for years sought to introduce work requirements, only to be stymied by HHS officials or federal judges who said conditioning Medicaid on work was not in keeping with the program’s goals of expanding access to health care. The legislation Trump and congressional Republicans want to pass would effectively remove that obstacle.

But the new legislation wouldn’t simply allow states to impose work requirements. It would require them to do so. And it wouldn’t leave states much discretion over how to do it. The legislation stipulates that states must take into account work status for at least the previous month, and verify eligibility at least every six months.

The only real leeway states have would be if they chose to limit enrollment even more aggressively by taking into account work history for longer than a month.

Throw in some other new rules the legislation would force on states—like prohibiting them from paying for gender-affirming care, or using their own money to cover undocumented immigrants—and the pattern is clear.

“Conservatives have long espoused states’ rights, but with Medicaid, Republicans are now seeking to impose a more limited version of health coverage on states,” Larry Levitt, KFF executive vice president, told me over email this week....>

<....Implementing all of this would be difficult. Among other things, states would need to create new data systems and hire new people to manage the verification process. That’s going to cost a lot more than the $100 million the legislation would award states to help defray the expense.

Georgia alone spent $50 million to implement its work requirement, as a recent article in Governing magazine pointed out. And enrollment in Georgia’s system has come in far below expectations, in part because there don’t seem to be enough staff to help beneficiaries deal with the new paperwork requirements.

Not so long ago, congressional Republicans would decry this sort of command as an “unfunded mandate”—a wild abuse of power by Washington over the will of the states.

But that was then. Now, Trump’s in charge.

THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’S cuts to the Affordable Care Act also flip the script on states’ rights.

Even though Obamacare put in place some big, transformative changes, like prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, the law left states with lots of discretion over how to manage insurance within their jurisdictions.

Among other things, the Affordable Care Act allows states to operate their own online marketplaces, which is why Marylanders buy plans through the Maryland Health Connection and Idahoans go to Your Health Idaho instead of using HealthCare.gov.

This deference to states was no accident. Democratic leaders putting together the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010 had to appease more conservative lawmakers within their caucus who—like their GOP counterparts—were wary of federal dictums and power. The decision also had a powerful practical rationale: State insurance regulators have lots of experience, and more specialized knowledge of their local market idiosyncrasies.

Among the states to use that discretion more aggressively has been California, whose marketplace, Covered California, has long been regarded as among the most successful in the country.

One example of how Covered California has innovated is by giving open enrollment more time than HeatlhCare.gov does—which, this year, meant allowing enrollment up through January 31, 2025 rather than January 15. Officials in California believe the extra time brings in more people, especially more marginal customers who otherwise might not get around to it. Those people tend to help insurance risk pools, thus holding down premiums, because they are often in better relative health.

The state can do this, Covered California director Jessica Altman told me in a phone interview, because California has developed systems and technology to process applications quickly so that even people applying at the end of month can have coverage that starts on the first day of the next one. But if Trump and his allies get their way, it won’t matter: The Republican bill would limit open enrollment to just seven weeks, running from November 1 to December 15, even for states like California that would prefer to allow more time.

And that’s just one of the ways Trump and the Republicans would restrict state officials administering the Affordable Care Act. Through legislation and regulation, Trump and Republicans have proposed requiring new, onerous processes for people who get insurance—including a prohibition on automatic re-enrollment in many circumstances, even though that is how employer coverage and other forms of private insurance typically work....>

<....The cumulative effect of these changes will be to depress enrollment. That appears to be more than fine with Trump and the Republicans. But it’s not what California’s leaders think their state wants—or needs.

“When we don’t have those flexibilities anymore,” Altman said, “we can’t meet the moment for consumers in the way that we have in the past—and the way that we absolutely want to in the future—and that’s really the problem of the one size fits all approach that that we’re now seeing.”

AS TRUMP AND HIS ALLIES in Washington have claimed more state power for themselves, Democrats have pushed back, whether it’s championing the rights of local or state authorities to defy federal immigration dictates or defending California’s rights to set emission rules as it pleases.

It’s a reminder that, for Democrats as well as Republicans, the fight over federalism may have less to do with principle about which level of government best serves the public and more to do with the balance of power between the two parties.

Today, Republicans control the White House and Congress. More federal power means more opportunities for them to impose MAGA’s will on the rest of America, and so of course they’ve learned to live with—and even prefer—centralizing authority in the buildings that line and surround Pennsylvania Avenue.

Republicans control much of the judiciary too, through judges they’ve put on the federal bench, including the Supreme Court. And while these judges still land on the side of state authority regularly—as they did when the high Court’s justices allowed state abortion prohibitions in Dobbs—they are not afraid to override state power, as they did when they invalidated New York’s concealed carry law.

As University of Michigan Professor Nicholas Bagley put it to me this week, “Federalism is invoked opportunistically by whichever party is out of power.”

Still, if both parties can rationalize using federal power when they have it, there are some very clear differences in the ways they do it. Democrats look to set minimum standards for things like economic security, environmental regulation, and the protection of marginalized groups, with room for states to go above and beyond those standards. Republicans look to set limits that states cannot exceed, while allowing them discretion to do less.

In that sense, the fight over federalism actually is the same fight the two parties have been having for generations: Not so much over who directs the change in America, but what that direction that change takes.>

<Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) appeared in court Wednesday morning in front U.S. District Court Judge Jamel Semper on a trio of charges following a May scuffle outside a federal immigration facility.

“Your honor, I plead not guilty,” she said.

Outside the courtroom, McIver and her attorney, Paul Fishman, said they plan to challenge the charges, which come with a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison, on legal and factual grounds.

“At the end of the day, this is all about political intimidation,” McIver told a crowd of supporters that had gathered outside the federal courthouse in Newark.

McIver is accused in a three-count indictment of slamming a federal agent with her forearm, “forcibly” grabbing him and using her forearms to strike another agent. Allegations of physical violence by a sitting member of Congress are rare, with a handful of incidents including the pre-Civil War caning of a senator by a member of the House.

McIver’s allies, including two other Democrats who were with her during the incident, have decried the charges as political and have said she was roughed up by federal agents. Her allies are also trying to turn the tables on the federal prosecutor bringing the case, the interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba.

The Campaign for Accountability, a liberal watchdog group, filed a complaint this week against Habba with the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics.

The complaint alleges Habba has acted improperly since becoming a prosecutor and cites her actions in the McIver case, along with comments about turning “New Jersey red” and announcing investigations into its Democratic governor and attorney general over immigration.

A spokesperson for Habba did not respond to a request for comment.

“In an atmosphere where other oversight bodies are caving to political influence, the bar’s duty to independently enforce these rules is ever more important,” the group’s executive director, Michelle Kuppersmith, said.

Habba, who represented Donald Trump in court between his presidencies, is already facing a lawsuit brought against her by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested for trespassing at the detention facility before the charges were dropped and a judge questioned Habba’s judgment.

When she first announced charges against McIver, Habba said she had “made efforts to address these issues without bringing criminal charges and have given Rep. McIver every opportunity to come to a resolution, but she has unfortunately declined.” The watchdog group’s complaint alleges it was improper to say the charges were contingent on McIver taking actions ordered and approved by Habba.

Campaign for Accountability filed a similar complaint in New York against another federal prosecutor, Emil Bove, after he moved to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The New York attorney grievance committee declined to act and instead transferred the complaint to the Department of Justice.

The charges against McIver are an extraordinary stress-test for the separation of powers at a time in which Trump is seeking to maximize executive branch dominance. In recent weeks, New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander was handcuffed and arrested by federal agents while escorting migrants from immigration hearings and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security press conference.

Neither Lander nor Padilla have been charged with anything. The two Democrats who were with McIver outside the immigration facility — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez — have also not been charged.

The three New Jersey Democrats have said they were at the immigration detention facility exercising their oversight duties and were roughed up by federal agents. Since their oversight visit, several detainees escaped and there were reports of poor conditions inside the facility, which the private company that runs the facility has denied.

McIver appeared virtually at a previous hearing in May, after charges were filed but before a grand jury returned an indictment. She was allowed to appear remotely from Washington because Congress was in session. Since then, the indictment has put her case in front of Judge Semper.

Semper set a schedule for legal arguments that could tee up a trial in early November. There are, however, potentially complex constitutional issues, because McIver claims she was fulfilling her duties as a member of Congress when the incident occurred and there are certain immunities granted to federal lawmakers.>

<Republicans are running into a major issue as they try to finalize their sweeping domestic-policy bill: arithmetic.

With just days until Senate GOP leaders want to start voting, they have been hit with a mathematical double-whammy: Tax writers are proposing a package that’s hundreds of billions of dollars more costly than what House Republicans have proposed, while senators struggle to finalize a larger package of spending cuts to offset it.

As deadline pressure from President Donald Trump intensifies — he reiterated Tuesday he wants the bill done by July 4 — Senate Majority Leader John Thune and GOP colleagues appear ready to call one of Capitol Hill’s best-known plays: daring fiscal hawks to stand in the way of Trump’s top legislative priority.

“When the House … is confronted with a binary decision of yes or no,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Tuesday, “yes is going to be a better answer than no.”

But an array of House Republicans is making clear the our-way-or-the-highway approach could be a recipe for division and delay — including from members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives who have long warned they will not swallow a Senate product that adds further to the national debt.

“They got a problem,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus member. “The conservatives have got a real problem if it’s not doing what we thought we had in the House.”

That mismatch was underscored by a new nonpartisan analysis released Monday night from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which found that the Senate’s tax package would cost some $400 billion more than the House’s in an apples-to-apples comparison.

That figure reflects pet priorities for Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and other Senate Republicans who want to make sure costly business tax incentives are made permanent. Notably, the JCT figure does not reflect a House-brokered deal on the state-and-local-tax deduction — something that is crucial to a handful of blue-state Republicans but is otherwise disposable as far as the Senate GOP is concerned.

Adding in the SALT language from the House-passed bill — which a handful of GOP lawmakers are insisting on — would add another $350 billion to the cost of the bill.

The ballooning tax cut package is important because House conservatives cut a deal with Speaker Mike Johnson as part of budget negotiations earlier this year that directly linked the size of the spending cuts to the overall price tag of the bill. Johnson even told hard-liners they could seek to remove him as speaker if he didn’t follow through.

Under that agreement, Republicans are permitted to enact $4 trillion in tax cuts as long as they muster $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. Any tax cuts that Republicans pile on above that amount needs to be offset dollar-for-dollar with additional spending cuts.

Thirty-eight House Republicans, led by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), wrote a letter to Thune in early June reminding him as much.

“Our position has been very clear for months now,” Smucker said in a brief interview Tuesday.

“I’m confident that Senator Thune has received multiple messages, not only from members, like the letter, and myself, but also with our leadership, who made the commitment,” added House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas)....>

<....Technically, the deal is only binding in the House, and Republicans there can waive the budget provision with the same simple-majority vote they need to pass the bill. Still, asked on Tuesday, Johnson said he expects the final bill to comply with the House budget instructions.

Senate Republicans are hoping to exceed the House’s $1.6 trillion of spending cuts, but are running into major headaches this week.

Some of them are political: A swath of GOP senators, not to mention House moderates, are uneasy with a Crapo-led plan to hold down Medicaid costs by targeting provider taxes, which most states use to leverage federal matching dollars and fund their programs. Senate GOP leaders have sought to allay concerns about threats to rural hospitals by creating a separate rescue fund, but lawmakers are continuing to push for less drastic House language that merely freezes the provider taxes instead of rolling them back.

Other headaches have been procedural, amplified by Senate budget rules: To skirt a filibuster and pass the bill on party lines, leaders need the chamber’s parliamentarian to sign off on various cost-saving provisions, and some have not passed muster — at least not yet.

Those include a $41 billion provision that would shift some food-aid costs to states for the first time. The measure was ruled ineligible over the weekend; but Republicans were informally advised Tuesday a tweaked version could likely remain in the bill.

Asked if he still thought the Senate could find deeper savings than the House, Thune said, “I hope so” while adding that what number the Senate would ultimately land on is “not certain” while the parliamentarian rulings are pending.

Also pending is a final resolution of the SALT issue. Blue-state Republicans who pushed for raising the cap on deductions have said they’re not willing to budge on the House-passed proposal. But Arrington said that the Senate’s extra tax cuts, including the permanent business tax provisions, are “going to probably put downward pressure on what we do with SALT.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who attended Tuesday’s closed-door GOP policy lunch on the Hill, told reporters afterward that he expected a resolution of the SALT issue in the coming days. But it could remain live until the very end of the “vote-a-rama” senators are aiming to undertake this weekend as the megabill is debated and potentially amended.

Besides SALT, House GOP leaders will likely push for several further modifications in a final “wraparound” amendment before the Senate passes the bill if it appears poised for failure in the House, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Asked about the burgeoning House opposition to the Senate bill, Johnson said “it’s premature to judge a product that hasn’t been delivered or decided upon yet.” He said he expects the bill to abide by the House budget parameters and that he spoke Tuesday with Thune to ensure “we have a product that both chambers can agree on.”>

<Vietnam is, officially, a communist country. The hammer and sickle hang from balconies and streetlamps.

The face of Ho Chi Minh — or “Uncle Ho,” as he is reverently known — appears on every denomination of the local currency. The ruling Communist Party tolerates no opposition, no free press, and no real public dissent.

Yet daily life in Hanoi feels unexpectedly open, improvisational, and relaxed — and strangely functional. This isn’t the gray, paranoid authoritarianism of Cold War caricature. It’s something different: A one-party state that governs tightly but intrudes lightly.

After several weeks in Hanoi, I keep returning to the same paradox: How can a place with no civil liberties feel, in some ways, freer and more orderly than American cities like San Francisco or Washington?

The streets of Hanoi are alive. Vendors hawk snacks. Families eat dinner on the sidewalk. Men kick shuttlecocks over makeshift nets. Sidewalks double as barbershops, scooter parking, and cafés. There are rules, but enforcement seems lax. You can park on the curb, start a business with minimal red tape, and leave your phone on a café table without much fear that it will be stolen.

Public safety is perhaps the starkest contrast. Young children toddle unattended down busy streets. Elderly women walk alone at night. There are no homeless encampments, no open drug use, few boarded-up shops. I have been routinely walking home late at night without feeling on edge the way I might in much of D.C. The chaos and grittiness of the city are real, but so is the safety.

Government authority in Vietnam is ambient but understood. Don’t criticize the Communist Party, and you will mostly be left alone. When I asked a friend what would happen if she stood in front of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum with a mocking sign, she said “nothing — but I would never do that.” Then, with complete sincerity, she added: “I love him.”

From childhood, Vietnamese are taught to revere their founding father much as American children once revered Washington and Jefferson.

Even health care felt refreshingly efficient. When I needed treatment for a minor issue, I got a same-day appointment at a public hospital. A friendly translator met me at the door. I waited 20 minutes before being seen by four competent medical professionals. I left just over an hour later with a prescription and a voucher for a free meal at the hospital canteen. Total cost: under $60. No insurance, no paperwork.

Vietnam’s COVID response was similarly pragmatic. The state imposed quarantines and deployed soldiers to deliver food. But unlike its neighbor, frenemy and ideological sibling China, Vietnam knew when to ease the grip. As vaccines arrived, restrictions softened. There was surveillance, but there was also adaptation.

I would never want to trade the American system for Vietnam’s. For behind the calm and competence lies a hard truth, and ultimately, it’s the only truth that matters: Vietnam remains one of the most repressive countries in Asia....>

<....The Communist Party tolerates no serious dissent. Independent journalism is virtually nonexistent. Elections are performative. Critics are jailed, monitored, or quietly disappeared. The Economist was recently pulled from newsstands for putting Vietnam’s new leader on its cover. As I write this, I wonder whether my visa might be revoked before my planned departure.

Freedom House scores Vietnam just 19 out of 100 on its freedom index — on par with Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of political prisoners are locked up, including bloggers, environmentalists, and religious advocates. Engineering students are required to take courses in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. There are no protest permits, no competitive elections, no independent judiciary. The internet is monitored. You can criticize the state — but don’t do it too loudly or on the wrong topics.

The trade-off here is clear: Social stability and economic growth are offered in exchange for silence. That may appeal to some. It’s not a deal I would ever take.

For all America’s dysfunction — its red tape, disorder, and political polarization — we still get the most important things right. We can speak, publish, protest, practice, and organize. Our institutions are flawed, but they are open to reform. Our courts are independent. Our leaders are replaceable. Our media is free. We do not need to whisper. We do not need to pretend.

In Hanoi, I could walk at night without fear. In Washington, I can speak my mind without fear. A truly functioning society should have both, but the latter is more important.

There’s nothing inherently authoritarian about safe streets or functioning services. A competent democracy should be able to deliver both liberty and order. That the U.S. increasingly doesn’t is a failure not of freedom but of governance.

Fifty years ago, America fled a war-torn Vietnam. Today, Vietnam is booming — prosperous, orderly and in some ways more functional than the country that once destroyed and tried to remake it.

But functionality isn’t freedom. Vietnamese communism may be more competent than Cuba’s and less authoritarian than China’s, but it shows what’s lost when speech, dissent, and choice are stripped away. You may get order and you may even get peace. But you live on terms you didn’t choose, and that’s not a bargain I’d ever make.>

<fredzhopnik>, still <stalking>, you contemptible piece of flotsam?

<President Donald Trump's Department of Justice entered rare company on Thursday after The New York Times reported that officials are pressuring a university president to resign to resolve a federal inquiry.

The federal inquiry concerns whether the University of Virginia adequately dismantled its diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs. The Justice Department has reportedly offered to end the probe if University President James Ryan steps down, the Times reported. DOJ's top two civil rights lawyers, Harmeet Dillon and Gregory Brown, are reportedly involved in the negotiations.

Some Republicans have labeled Ryan as "too woke," the Times reported.

Legal experts say there have been few instances where the federal government asked a university administrator to resign to resolve a federal inquiry.

“This is a tactic you would expect the government to use when it’s playing hardball in a criminal case involving a corporation accused of serious wrongdoing or pervasive criminal activity,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, told the Times.

Ryan has been the university's president since 2018. Before that, he worked at Harvard Graduate School of Education and was celebrated for his commitments to DEI.

He has recently been targeted by America First Legal, a Trump-linked nonprofit founded by Stephen Miller, with a lawsuit for allegedly not complying with an executive order prohibiting public universities from having DEI programs. In a news release from May, the nonprofit accused Ryan of "rebranding" the university's programs "to evade legal scrutiny.">

<An ideologically divided Supreme Court sided with South Carolina in its effort to deprive Planned Parenthood of public funding, a decision that is likely to prompt other Republican-led states to take similar action against a health care organization under attack for providing abortion services.

The court’s 6-3 ruling June 26 − over the dissent of the three liberal justices − that Medicaid patients can’t sue over their right to choose their doctor could also limit care options beyond the controversial realm of reproductive care.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said Medicaid law doesn't include a "clear and unambiguous notice of an individually enforceable right."

But there are other ways to challenge South Carolina's decision to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program, he said. The federal government can withhold funding from a state that is not following the rules. And Planned Parenthood can use the state's administrative process to argue it's a qualified provider.

"Indeed, Planned Parenthood itself pursued just such an administrative claim at one point," Gorsuch wrote.

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority's decision will likely "result in tangible harm to real people."

"At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them," she wrote.

Trump, porn and religion More major Supreme Court decisions coming soon The Trump administration had backed South Carolina after the Justice Department reevaluated its position following the change in administrations.

And anti-abortion groups are pushing Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress to impose a national ban on Planned Parenthood’s participation in Medicaid. The organization has said that would have "catastrophic consequences," potentially causing the closure of nearly 200 health centers in 24 states, including half the centers that provide abortions.

"You should have the freedom to decide what's best for you, not the government," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Alexis McGill Johnson. "This is a fight that Planned Parenthood has never backed down from, and we will not start now."

One-third of Planned Parenthood's revenue comes from state and federal government funding, including Medicaid, to provide health services, according to the nonpartisan health research organization KFF.

Defunding Planned Parenthood is longtime GOP goal

Republicans have long sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions.

Medicaid, which is funded primarily through federal dollars and operated by states to provide health care for low-income residents, already prohibits coverage of abortion in most cases.

But South Carolina argues that the money Planned Parenthood gets from the government for providing birth control, cancer screenings, physical exams, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and other health services “frees up their other funds to provide more abortions.”

The state's Republican governor, Henry McMaster, signed an executive order in 2018 to cut off Medicaid funding. His order was blocked in court.

"Seven years ago, we took a stand to protect the sanctity of life and defend South Carolina's authority and values – and today, we are finally victorious," McMaster said in a statement after the high court ruled....>

<....Lower court blocked South Carolina from defunding Planned Parenthood

Nearly half of Planned Parenthood patients nationwide get their health care through Medicaid, although that share is much lower in South Carolina, which has tighter eligibility rules than most states, according to the organization.

The federal Medicaid Act says eligible people may receive health care “from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required.”

The Supreme Court was asked to review a lower court's decision that the language clearly allows a Medicaid patient to sue if a state blocks a qualified provider from the program.

In this case, the patient was Julie Edwards, a Medicaid recipient who prefers to go to Planned Parenthood for her reproductive health care because they treat her “without judgment.” Edwards also said she has had trouble finding doctors willing to see Medicaid recipients.

South Carolina says Medicaid patients have many other options, including 140 federally qualified health clinics and pregnancy centers.

But the American Public Health Association and other health groups told the court more than half of South Carolina’s counties don’t have enough health services to meet demand, and nearly 2 in 5 are considered “contraceptive deserts.”

Planned Parenthood “fills the gaps where South Carolina’s providers are scarcest ‒ women’s health and preventative care ‒ lessening the burden on other parts of the state’s healthcare system,” various health care policy experts, advocates and providers in South Carolina told the Supreme Court.

Dr. Katherine Farris, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said the organization is exploring every option to keep its doors open to all patients, including those with Medicaid coverage.

“We are working hard not to turn people away," she said after the court's decision. "But the reality is we may not be able to do that for long.”>

<California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit Friday against Fox News, asking the network to pay $787.5 million in damages over its coverage of his phone call with President Donald Trump during the Los Angeles protests earlier this month.

“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences, just like it did in the Dominion case,” Newsom told Politico Friday. “Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”

In the suit, Newsom alleged that Fox News host Jesse Watters lied about a phone call between Newsome and Trump, a call Newsom denies took place, though Trump claimed it did. The alleged call was made amid increased tension between the White House and Newsom over the growing protests, largely motivated by the Trump administration’s deportation policy, which ultimately culminated with Trump ordering National Guard troops to quash the protests.

Mark Bankson, a lawyer representing Newsom, wrote in the suit that Trump’s claim that the phone call took place, a claim Newsom rejects, was consistent with the president’s past behavior.

“It is perhaps unsurprising that a near-octogenarian with a history of delusionary public statements and unhinged late-night social media screeds might confuse the dates,” Bankson and other attorneys of Newsom’s wrote, Politico reported. “But Fox’s decision to cover up for President Trump’s error cannot be so easily dismissed.”

Newsom’s legal team said the governor would be willing to drop the lawsuit should Watters apologize on air, and Fox News retract the claims.>

<President Donald Trump is on Air Force One Tuesday morning, en route to the Netherlands for a NATO summit. He spent his flight time launching personal attacks on Truth Social.

"Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the 'dumbest' people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment, despite the fact that the Crooked and Corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before," Trump said of the New York Democrat who claimed over the weekend that Trump's bombing of Iran without Congressional approval was grounds for a misconduct trial.

"The reason for her 'rantings; is all of the Victories that the U.S.A. has had under the Trump Administration. The Democrats aren’t used to WINNING, and she can’t stand the concept of our Country being successful again."

Trump then pivoted to talk about "test scores" among Ocasio-Cortez and other Trump foes like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

"When we examine her Test Scores, we will find out that she is NOT qualified for office but, nevertheless, far more qualified than Crockett, who is a seriously Low IQ individual, or Ilhan Omar, who does nothing but complain about our Country, yet the Failed Country that she comes from doesn’t have a Government, is drenched in Crime and Poverty, and is rated one of the WORST in the World, if it’s even rated at all. How dare “The Mouse” tells us how to run the United States of America!"

The was no indication of how he generated the name "the mouse."

His ranting continued with a pivot to attack former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over his claims of scandal involving the use of an autopen to sign documents. All presidents, including Trump, use the autopen.

Trump pivoted back to attack Ocasio-Cortez, with a suggestion of what he was referencing with "test scores." He revealed that he recently took another cognitive exam, something Trump has said he's taken at least three times.

"AOC should be forced to take the Cognitive Test that I just completed at Walter Reed Medical Center, as part of my Physical," Trump said. "As the Doctor in charge said, 'President Trump ACED it,' meaning, I got every answer right. Instead of her constant complaining, Alexandria should go back home to Queens, where I was also brought up, and straighten out her filthy, disgusting, crime ridden streets, in the District she 'represents,' and which she never goes to anymore."

He alleged that Ocasio-Cortez should pay more attention to her 2026 primary campaign rather than focusing on a higher office in the U.S. Senate.

"She and her Democrat friends have just hit the Lowest Poll Numbers in Congressional History, so go ahead and try Impeaching me, again, MAKE MY DAY!" Trump closed.>

<Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) poked fun at Defense secretary Pete Hegseth for his animated performance at Thursday's news conference on destruction caused by the airstrikes on Iran.

Hegseth unleashed on the media for "spinning" the news against Trump and the U.S. military because they wouldn't take Donald Trump's word that Iran's nuclear sites were "obliterated."

"It's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad," Hegseth said. "You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective. Maybe the way the Trump administration is representing them isn't true. So let's take half-truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it. Spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the mind, the public mind, over whether or not our brave pilots were successful."

Swalwell posted to social media, "Did Secretary of Defense Hegseth start crying today during his press conference? My God. Is he emotionally stable enough to lead our military?"

Other onlookers piled on Swalwell's mockery.

Liberal commentator @covie_93 posted to his 140,000 followers, "Ok hegseth you cried and have your little tantrum but we'd still like to know if the enriched Uranium was moved before the strike and if so where?"

"No, I’m not watching Pete Hegseth cry, lie, and j--- o-- Trump for half an hour. This is the most pathetic Administration in history. Just a bunch of whiny losers," wrote Army combat veteran and podcaster Fred Wellman.

Lucas Sanders, who's followed by Republicans Against Trump and 36,000 other accounts wrote, "Did Pete Hegseth start crying today during his press conference? Yikes. Was he emotionally stable enough to lead our military or not?"

"F------ crybaby Hegseth is crying about the press. For guys who love to call themselves tough guys, this administration does a lot of whining," wrote attorney Thomas Protano.>

<For a moment, the spat between former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, drew most of the media’s attention when Cruz couldn’t answer basic questions about Iran, whose government he wishes to topple. Despite the Texas senator’s confident declarations about the alleged value of regime change in Iran, he couldn’t name the country’s population and seemed to know very little about its culture. But there was another part of the interview that was probably even more telling — and disturbing.

“As a Christian growing up in Sunday school,” Cruz said, “I was taught from the Bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.” He added, “I want to be on the blessing side of things.”

Carlson, despite being a war skeptic, moved on without challenging Cruz’s assumption that the U.S. should behave as a Christian theocracy instead of a secular democracy. But Cruz’s statement is noteworthy, because it’s a head nod to a factor in Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, one which most of the press is underplaying: The role of right-wing Christian fanaticism.

But the wild claims made by leaders of the Christian right have also been in the mix: That Trump is a prophet sent by God to usher in the end times, and that attacking Iran is necessary to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ.

In the past week or so, the majority of press coverage of the intra-MAGA fight over intervening in Israel’s war with Iran has focused almost exclusively on the secular arguments of both sides. But the wild claims made by leaders of the Christian right have also been in the mix: That Trump is a prophet sent by God to usher in the end times, and that attacking Iran is necessary to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. It’s this delusion that Cruz was winking at, and it was likely a powerful reason Trump decided to escalate.

Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Salon that Cruz was referencing evangelical belief in a Biblical prophecy that war involving Israel and the larger Middle East is “only one more step in ushering in Jesus’s return.” As journalist Sarah Posner explained at Talking Points Memo, “this movement holds that a series of prophesied events, including Jews’ return to Israel and invasion by armies of foreign countries including Iran, will culminate in a bloody, victorious battle at Armageddon.” As a result, the conflict between Iran and Israel has launched a frenzy within evangelical circles, as they hope the final battle is coming and they will get to witness the end times.

Family Research Council head Tony Perkins was one of the architects of Project 2025, the far-right plan for a government takeover being implemented by Trump’s administration. He’s also a big believer in this Biblical prophecy and, as Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch documented, has been using his podcast to frame war with Iran as the key to bringing Jesus back to earth. Mantyla also chronicled how former GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann and MAGA pastor Shane Vaughn used the World Prayer Network — an evangelical organization that “hosts weekly prayer calls to seek out strategies for the transformation of nations” — to posit that Trump survived an attempted assassination last summer precisely so he could usher in the end times by bringing this war.

“[T]his isn’t political, it’s spiritual,” influential evangelical leader Lance Wallnau insisted on X. “The real dividing line has always been biblical. Israel is an end-times flashpoint.” A group of religious right leaders got so excited about this prospect that they joined in a dramatic public prayer outside the White House. One of their declarations: That like the Hebrew queen Esther — who wed King Ahasuerus of Persia and saved the country’s Jews from slaughter — they had been brought “to the kingdom for a time such as this.”

All this isn’t just religious grandstanding, either. It’s an effective lobbying project to convince Trump to ignore Carlson, his former aide Steve Bannon and the various podcast bros who are speaking out against war with Iran. Mike Huckabee, who now serves as ambassador to Israel but is also a Southern Baptist minister (and former Republican governor of Arkansas), sent Trump a text in which he insisted the president was chosen by God for this moment, citing the failed assassination as evidence. While Trump calls ministers like Huckabee charlatans behind their backs, it appears he is still narcissistic enough to imagine that he is the chosen one. So of course, he shared the text on social media....>

<....After the 2024 election, most of the political media’s attention has been paid to more secular voters who backed Trump, especially young men who were wowed by disinformation that painted the president as a regular guy and, on various “comedy” podcasts hosted by right-leaning men, even a peacenik. But while those voters were important for getting Trump over the top in a razor-thin election, they only represent a tiny fraction of the Trump coalition. Far larger is the evangelical base, without whom Trump would be nothing. Exit polls show that 82 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2024, while 58 percent of the rest of the public backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. They are not only Trump’s voting bloc, but white evangelicals are well-organized, making them the biggest power players in the MAGA coalition.

As Butler pointed out to Salon, both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered showy “invocations of God” in their public statements about the Iran bombing, which was meant to signal to the evangelical base that their prayers were being answered. “I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America,” Trump said during his remarks from the White House on Saturday night announcing the airstrikes. Hegseth, a devout Christian nationalist, went a step further, using his time during a press conference the following day to “give glory to God” for blessing the attacks.

The message was heard loud and clear by the Christian right. Paula White, the charismatic televangelist and Trump’s “spiritual advisor,” posted the clip on Instagram. In comments, followers gushed about how Trump — who famously laughs at Christians when they leave the room — is the first real Christian they’ve ever seen in the White House.

Trump is still feeling pressure from the small but important anti-war faction of his coalition. Right now, he is on safe ground. He seems to have convinced the so-called “MAGA doves” that the bombing of Iran was a one-time event and that he has single-handedly brought peace to the Middle East. Trump’s claim was undermined when, hours after he had announced a cease-fire, Israel and Iran went back to bombing each other, annoying him so much that dropped an f-bomb on live TV. He’s also been wilding out on Truth Social, uncorking a series of posts that are unhinged, even for him.

The pressure from Trump’s evangelical base offers insight into why he is cracking. He almost certainly would like to leave his intervention in Iran behind. But he can’t say no to evangelicals, because he knows that he’s nothing without them. He should be worried. Even if hostilities in the Middle East die down, the excitement for Armageddon among his most loyal followers may not dissipate quickly. The desire to be the generation that sees Jesus Christ return to earth is strong among them. Even more importantly, the promise of the end times is useful for televangelists and other Christian right influencers. As long as dramatic talk of the apocalypse feeds them money and attention, the leaders will be reluctant to let go of their dream of a bigger war with Iran.>

Like doing unhinged, <fredfradiavolo>? In case you don't know, <fra diavolo> means 'brother devil', a quite fair description of the evil that you personify.

<For Donald Trump, it was a “monumental victory.”

For the Trump resistance, there are signs of hope buried in the fine print.

Those dueling interpretations emerged Friday in the hours after the Supreme Court issued its blockbuster decision in Trump’s challenge to three nationwide injunctions that have blocked his attempt to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born on American soil.

And both contain an element of truth.

The 6-3 decision has a single headline holding: Federal district judges “lack authority” to issue “universal injunctions,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the conservative majority. It’s a breathtaking pronouncement given that district judges, with increasing frequency, have been issuing those sorts of injunctions for decades.

It was precisely the bottom-line result that Trump’s Justice Department asked for in the case. Sweeping injunctions have blocked many of Trump’s second-term initiatives, not just his executive order on birthright citizenship. Now, the Supreme Court has made clear, an injunction against a challenged policy should ordinarily apply only to the individuals or organizations who sued. For everyone else, the policy can take effect even if a district judge believes it’s likely illegal.

But Barrett’s 26-page opinion leaves a surprising degree of wiggle room. Yes, conventional nationwide injunctions are off the table, but Trump’s opponents say they see alternative routes to obtain effectively the same sweeping blocks of at least some policies that run afoul of the law and the Constitution.

The court appeared to leave open three specific alternatives: Restyle the legal challenges as class-action lawsuits; rely on state-led lawsuits to obtain broad judicial rulings; or challenge certain policies under a federal administrative law that authorizes courts to strike down the actions of executive branch agencies.

The viability of these three potential alternatives is not yet clear. But the court explicitly declined to rule them out. That led Justice Samuel Alito — who joined the majority opinion — to write a concurrence to raise concerns that the court was leaving loopholes that could undercut its main holding.

If lower courts permit litigants to exploit those loopholes, Alito wrote, “today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.”

Legal experts were unsure about the practical implications of the ruling — especially in the birthright citizenship cases, but also in other challenges to Trump policies.

“One of the things that’s problematic about this decision is how difficult it will be to implement,” said Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia law professor whose scholarship was cited in the justices’ ruling. “I think it’s really hard to say.”

The class action workaround

The court’s decision explicitly left open one avenue for legal challengers to obtain a broad ruling that can apply to thousands or even millions of people: File a class-action case.

Class actions allow large groups of similarly situated individuals to band together and sue over a common problem. If a judge sides with class-action challengers against a federal law or policy, the judge can issue a binding order that protects everyone in the class from being subject to the law or policy.

Within hours of the court’s decision on Friday, one of the groups challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship policy moved to refashion its case as a class action.

But class actions are not a panacea for the Trump resistance. Federal rules require special procedures before a court can “certify” a class. Litigants seeking to use the class-action mechanism must meet several criteria that don’t apply in ordinary lawsuits. And the Supreme Court itself has, in recent years, raised the legal standards for people to bring class actions.

Barrett wrote that these heightened requirements underscore the need to limit universal injunctions, which she labeled a “shortcut” around the stringent standards that accompany class-action suits.

“Why bother with a … class action when the quick fix of a universal injunction is on the table?” she wrote.

Alito, in his concurrence Friday, warned district judges not to be overly lax in green-lighting class actions.

“Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following” procedural strictures, the conservative justice wrote....>

<....Broader relief for states

A second potential silver lining for Trump’s opponents is that the court recognized that states may sometimes be entitled to broader injunctions than individual challengers.

Barrett wrote in the majority opinion that district judges are empowered to provide “complete relief” to litigants who are improperly harmed by government policies. And when states sue the federal government, it’s possible, legal experts say, that “complete relief” requires a sweeping judicial remedy.

That remedy might take the form of an injunction that applies everywhere in the suing states. Barrett herself contemplated that it might be proper for lower courts to forbid Trump from applying his executive order on birthright citizenship anywhere within the states that have challenged the order. (About 22 Democratic-led states have done so.)

That scenario would create an odd patchwork: Automatic birthright citizenship would apply in half the country but would disappear in the other half until the Supreme Court definitively resolves the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order.

There is even a chance that “complete relief” for a state might extend beyond the state’s borders and apply nationally — because residents of one state frequently move to another. Still, the bounds of what the court meant by “complete relief” remain murky.

Frost said that it’s unclear what an injunction that affords “complete relief” to a state, while stopping short of a “universal” or “nationwide” remedy, would look like. “I don’t know, and that’s a problem of the court’s own making,” she said.

Nonetheless, Democrats like New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seized on the “complete relief” opening, saying it was a reason for optimism and effectively an endorsement of what he and other blue state officials had contended since the start. He and other Democratic attorneys general emphasized that they argued at all levels of the court system the need for nationwide relief in the birthright citizen case — because it would be pure chaos if residents left one state where they were entitled to birthright citizenship and moved to another state where they were not entitled to it, or vice versa.

“As I sit here now, as it relates to states, the court confirmed what we thought all along. Nationwide relief should be limited but is available to states,” Platkin said.

Barrett, however, wrote that the court was not taking a firm position on the scope of any injunction the states might be entitled to.

“We decline to take up these arguments,” she wrote, adding that the lower courts should assess them first.

Setting aside agency actions

The third potential workaround for opponents of Trump policies involves a federal statute known as the Administrative Procedure Act.

That law authorizes lower courts to “set aside” actions by regulatory agencies if the courts find the actions to be arbitrary, rather than based on reasoned analysis. That sort of wholesale judicial relief in some ways resembles a nationwide or “universal” injunction, but Barrett wrote in a footnote that the court’s decision does not address the scope of relief in lawsuits filed under the APA.

Some of the lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies have been brought under the APA. For instance, a district judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempt to freeze vast amounts of federal spending after the judge found that the move would violate the APA.

But not all policies are agency actions that would be subject to APA challenges. The birthright citizenship policy, for instance, was promulgated through an executive order, not through any federal agency. On the other hand, the order has a 30-day “ramp-up period” in which agencies will develop guidelines before implementing the order. Those guidelines might become targets for APA challenges.>

<The leaders of a deep-red state's legislature are now publicly railing against President Donald Trump's major domestic policy package, arguing its provisions would be uniquely harmful to their constituents.

In a Friday op-ed for the New York Times, Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon (I) and Alaska state senator Catherine Giessel (R) — who is the majority leader for the Alaska Senate Bipartisan Coalition – detailed the numerous reasons why the Republican budget bill is particularly disastrous for the Last Frontier.

The two began the op-ed by pointing out that the current version of the bill's cuts to Medicaid would throw approximately 40,000 Alaskans off of their health insurance plans, and its cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) would mean "thousands of families will go hungry." They also called attention to the provision in the bill that would put states partially on the hook for funding food stamps for the first time in history: Edgmon and Giessel warned that "the shift in costs from the federal government to the state will plunge our budget into a severe deficit, cripple our state economy and make it harder to provide basic services."

"The likely impacts from the 'big, beautiful bill' are particularly ugly for our home state, Alaska," they wrote.

"This is not about partisanship. One of us is a Republican and the other is an independent," they continued. "In the Alaska Legislature, our State Senate and House are led by a bipartisan governing coalition. Our focus is squarely on the survival of the people we represent."

Edgmon and Giessel observed that roughly one in three Alaskans depend on Medicaid — including more than half of the state's children. The lawmakers further argued that the proposed Medicaid cuts would make it exceedingly difficult for residents in "roadless villages" to be able to travel to hospitals when they're in need of medical care. They also noted that roughly 70,000 Alaska residents rely on food stamps in order to afford groceries and buy other "subsistence gear" that many Alaskans count on for "essential hunting and fishing."

"In order to make up for this cost-shifting legislation, Alaska would need to find in its already stressed budget hundreds of millions of dollars for Medicaid and tens of millions for SNAP," Edgmon and Giessel wrote. "Such cuts could not come at a worse time. We’re already struggling to stabilize our budget amid sharply lower oil revenue and a decade of out-migration. If this bill passes, it will mean less money for road maintenance and snow clearing, larger K-12 class sizes, school closings and the defunding of state public safety agencies."

The legislative leaders went on argue that the new work requirements for Medicaid recipients that Congressional Republicans inserted into the bill would prove "untenable for rural Alaska" given the lack of job opportunities and internet access across much of the state. They lamented that many residents will likely avoid seeking medical care unless it's an emergency, meaning that emergency rooms could be overwhelmed with uninsured patients, resulting in higher insurance premiums for everyone else.

"The reality is that most Alaskans on Medicaid are already working, and these provisions just create more barriers and bureaucracy," they wrote in the op-ed. "... We fear that if this bill passes, a village in rural Alaska might lose its one and only grocery store because of a drastic decline in SNAP dollars. It might also lose its sole health care clinic or hospital because it cannot sustain its services with decreased Medicaid reimbursements. The reconciliation bill does not take into account the uniqueness of Alaskan lifestyles and geographic remoteness."

"What is the end game here? How does it help anyone to terminate health care coverage for our most vulnerable through red tape or take away food for families who have limited to no options for gainful employment?" They added. "As long-serving members of the Alaska House of Representatives and the Alaska State Senate, we’ve faced many daunting economic and fiscal challenges, but we’ve never seen federal policy whose impacts are so far-reaching and damaging as what is before us now. Alaska is one of the most amazing places in our country and Congress is risking our way of life to give money to the rich.">

<Leave it to the Democratic Party to snatch an existential crisis from the jaws of electoral victory.

The stunning success of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, in the race for New York City mayor is causing anguish in the Democratic Party.

It’s one thing for Trump to call Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” That’s to be expected from the vulgarian-in-chief. It’s another for Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, to warn that Mamdani’s “affiliation with the (Democratic Socialists of America) is very dangerous.”

Dangerous for whom? Bernie Sanders nearly won the Democratic primary for the 2016 presidential election after announcing he was a democratic socialist — and probably would have won had the Democratic National Committee not torpedoed him.

Lawrence Summers, treasury secretary under former Democratic President Barack Obama, says the New York City results make him “profoundly alarmed about the future of the (Democratic Party) and the country.”

Well, I’m profoundly alarmed, too — by just this kind of vacuous statement. If polls are to be believed, the current Democratic Party doesn’t have much of a future. Mamdani and other young politicians with the charisma to connect with the people and a willingness to take on corporate America and Wall Street may be the only way forward for the Democrats.

Nor has the mainstream media greeted Mamdani’s upset victory with much enthusiasm. The Associated Press writes that “the party’s more pragmatic wing cast the outcome as a serious setback in their quest to broaden Democrats’ appeal.”

Pragmatic wing? Since when has the corporate establishment of the Democratic Party distinguished itself by its pragmatism or its quest to broaden Democrats’ appeal? If it were pragmatic — in the sense of wanting to win elections and fire up the base — Democrats would not have lost the House, Senate, and presidency in 2024.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post editorializes that “Democrats should fear that [Mamdani] will discredit their next generation of party leaders, almost all of whom are better than this democratic socialist.”

Bezos — who controls the content of the Post’s editorial page as he sucks up to Trump and is now occupying vast swaths of Venice for his wedding with Lauren Sanchez — is not the most credible source of wisdom when it comes to the identity of the Democrats’ next generation of party leaders.

Not surprisingly, the Post criticizes Mamdani’s proposals for a 2 percent annual wealth tax on the richest 1 percent of New Yorkers and for increasing the state’s corporate tax rate from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent: “Mamdani’s tax plans would spur a corporate exodus and drive more rich people out of town, undermining the tax base and making existing services harder to maintain.”

It’s the same argument we’ve heard for 40 years: If you raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, you’ll drive them away — from your city, your state, your nation.

Rubbish. The reality is that if you invest in your people — in their skills, education, affordable child care, affordable elder care, and the infrastructure needed to link them together — they’ll be more productive, and their higher productivity will attract corporations (and the wealthy). A major way to afford all these things is to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Mamdani is the corporate Democrat’s biggest nightmare — a young, charismatic politician winning over Democratic voters with an optimistic message centering on the cost of living. Putting together a multiethnic and multiracial coalition backed by a sprawling grassroots campaign that brings out enormous numbers of volunteers. Savvy in social media. Aiming to fund what average people need by taxing corporations and the rich....>

<....Instead of wringing their hands over him, Democrats should follow his lead.

The largest force in American politics today is antiestablishment fury at a system rigged by big corporations and the wealthy to make them even richer and more powerful.

The corporate Democratic establishment — fat cats on Wall Street, corporate moguls in c-suites, billionaire backers of Democrats who will do their bidding, and the big-named Democrats who endorsed Andrew Cuomo — are the biggest problem for the party. They are standing in the way of its mounting a forceful response to Trump and providing a blueprint for the future.

Trump is killing the economy, fueling inflation with his tariffs, reducing the U.S. government to rubble, and destroying our relationships with our allies. He’s readying another giant tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations — this one to be financed by cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, and other things average people need, along with trillions more in national debt.

My old friend James Carville advises Democrats to “roll over and play dead.” With due respect to James, Democrats have been rolling over and playing dead too long. That’s one reason the nation is in the trouble we’re in.

If Democrats had had the guts years ago to condemn big money in politics, fight corporate welfare, and unrig a market that’s been rigged in favor of big corporations and the rich, Trump’s absurd bogeymen (the deep state, immigrants, socialists, trans people, diversity-equity-inclusion) wouldn’t have stood a chance.

My simple advice to congressional Democrats: Wake the hell up. According to polls, most Americans don’t want a Trump Republican budget that slashes Medicaid, food stamps, and child nutrition in order to make way for a giant tax cut mostly for the wealthy.

Most don’t want tariffs that drive up the prices they pay for food, gas, housing, and clothing. Most understand that tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers. Most don’t want a government of, by, and for billionaires. Most believe in democracy and the rule of law and don’t want Trump trampling on the Constitution, acts of Congress, and federal court orders.

Not only should Democrats be making noise about all this, they should stop relying on so-called “moderates” to speak for them. The nation is in clear and present danger. Democrats must stand up for American ideals at a time when the Trump regime is riding roughshod over them.

Democrats need Zohran Mamdani and other young politicians with fight in their hearts and rage in their bellies who can show that Trump is bad for working people and terrible for America and the world, and who can point the way forward.

We need a new generation of leaders who are the voices of democracy, freedom, social justice, and the rule of law. A new generation that gives meaning to the “we” in “we the people.”

Instead of fretting over Mamdani, the Democratic Party should embrace him as the future.>