Saturday Report 4/11/26 — When will the other Melania shoe drop?

The Best of the Rest of the News

— Is Trump privatizing Medicare? George W. Bush and his Republicans in Congress (with help from a few on-the-take Democrats) rolled out a privatized alternative to Medicare in 2005; it’s called Medicare Advantage. Now Trump and Dr. Oz appear prepared to begin the process or replacing real Medicare with the private, for-profit system. Their strategy is to automatically sign people up for Medicare Advantage when they turn 65 as the default, rather than real Medicare.As Congressman Mark Pocan said, “Medicare Advantage is private, for-profit insurance that overcharges American taxpayers by billions every year and regularly denies seniors the care they need. Making Medicare Advantage the default option hurts patients and taxpayers, but it will make insurance execs a lot of money.” Billions of dollars in profit every year, in fact, since people on Medicare Advantage are routinely denied care or payment for care already provided. And, while these insurance industry leeches pass some of that profit back to GOP lawmakers as bribes gifts, tips, and campaign contributions, we the taxpayers pick up the bill. For a deep dive on this corrupt system, click here.

— The economy is falling apart as Stagflation looms on the horizon. For years, Bibi Netanyahu has been trying to find an American president stupid enough to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf. Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden all said, “No!” but in his second term Trump appears to have lost what little judgement and reasoning abilities he may have once had. Now the same dynamic that created inflation and stagnated the economy in the 1970s when the Arab oil producers cut off our supply has reappeared because Iran succeeded in cutting off tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Inflation last month came in at .9% for March, a mind-boggling number, particularly when you annualize it by multiplying it by 12 months (and that’s assuming the price of oil and gas don’t go up any farther). Fertilizer from the Gulf is jacking up prices for farmers as we go into planting season, and threatens inflation here, but could cause actual famine in poorer parts of the world. Helium from the Gulf necessary to run MRI machines and make precision microchips is running low. And the economy is slowing down, with many predicting disaster if the AI bubble pops this year. The Fed has two mandates written into the law that created it: control inflation and keep down unemployment. When inflation goes up, they increase interest rates to cool the economy; when unemployment goes up they lower interest rates to stimulate the economy. But when both are happening at the same time, they’re stuck in a terrible bind with no good way out…but with stopping inflation becoming the Prime Directive. That means interest rate increases may be on the horizon, which could really hurt. Buckle up: this could get ugly.

— The GOP’s white male supremacist project rolls along at the Pentagon. Now that notorious white christian nationalist “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth has purged the senior ranks of our military, the Joint Chiefs are all white men. According to The New York Times, Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, said, “President Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events,” helping accelerate the purges. In the military, though, white men are actually outnumbered by the combination of women (20%) and people of color (43%). Hegseth, nonetheless, told an audience of several hundred military people, “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’” At what point will the white people who’ve voted majority Republican in every presidential race since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act realize that diversity actually is strength and stop supporting these open racists?

— Trump has promised to pardon the people who’ve committed crimes for him in the White House, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. Reporter Josh Dawsey writes, “In one conversation with advisers in the dining room next to the Oval Office last year, Trump said he would host a news conference and announce mass pardons before he left office, some of the people said. The people said they weren’t aware of specific pardons being offered to specific people for specific acts.” This has a ring of truth to it — it’s just an echo with what he did for the people who tried to overthrow our government on January 6th — and the WSJ is backing up their reporting. The pardon power is explicit in the Constitution, and has no qualifications or limitations except for impeachment. Which is why it’s so urgent to impeach him as soon as possible.

— Carlos Hernandez, 36, is the father of a two-year-old daughter and works rehabbing houses that have been damaged in fires; ICE thugs pumped 6 bullets into his body, including one into his face. He survived, but is hospitalized. ICE is claiming he tried to “weaponize” his car, a common lie they tell (see: Renee Good), and refusing to name the agents who shot him. They also now claim he’s a member of a notorious gang, which he, his attorney, and his family deny. Another day, another ICE outrage. How many brutal incidents and murders is it going to take to get this rogue agency shut down or at least to start operating under the rule of law and the Constitution?

— When will the other Melania shoe drop? The great mystery this week, at least across cable news and social media, is why Melania Trump would go on TV from the White House and pull a Richard Nixon “I am not a crook” for no apparent reason. That didn’t work out well for Nixon, and it’s unlikely her demand that “The false smears about me … must stop” will do anything other than fuel more speculation and a faster circulation of her nudie pictures and photos of her with Jeffrey Epstein. Speculations about what provoked her run from a woman close to her threatening to “expose” her “pedophile husband,” to the possibility a new book is about to come out claiming Melania and Epstein were once involved, to weird theories that Trump asked her to do it (he claims he didn’t even know she was going to, but he constantly lies) to distract from the Iran debacle. Something very, very weird is going on with this couple (if you could call two people who live and sleep separately a couple). But then, if you were married to Trump, wouldn’t you be a bit on the edge, too?

— Speaking of which, the attorney for the woman who says Trump forced her to give him a blow job when she was 13 years old and she bit his penis, leading to him beating her up, is now demanding that the president testify under oath. Nobody’s holding their breath, but maybe this is what Trump saw coming that made him think invading Iran would be a good idea? Or what caused Melania to assert her independence this week with her bizarre White House press appearance? It’s always difficult to meaningfully speculate about the motivations and behaviors of a psychopathic sexual predator, but, nonetheless, these victims deserve their day in court.

— Best News of the Week: New polling estimates show Trump is underwater (below 50%) in the districts or states of 135 current Republican members of the House and Senate. I’ll just leave that on there for you to savor… ;)