1. SCOTUS deathblow. All is not lost. The ruling does not change the status of anyone subject to birthright citizenship, and gives lower courts 30 days to further consider the issue. Advocates immediately filed a class-action lawsuit to block Trump's plan, which would end automatic citizenship for babies born in the United States unless their parents were also citizens or legal, permanent residents.
If cases are filed throughout the country, in my experience, all cases will be sent to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), the body that determines whether civil actions pending in different federal districts should be transferred to a single district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, also known as multidistrict litigation (MDL). The JPML is comprised of seven federal district court judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States. They are responsible for deciding if cases should be centralized and, if so, which court and judge should oversee the pretrial proceedings.
2. Point of no return. Here in Baghdad By the Sea, the Proud Boys have turned against Trump.
The rationale is they are antisemites and will not support Israel. I assume that other white supremacist groups have a similar position.
3. Suing Fox. For years I couldn't understand why HRC and Biden and others who are defamed don't sue. I wish Newsom good luck. Fox is extremely vulnerable. Besides Newsom, they have a pending Smartmatic suit which may be worth $billions and shareholder derivitive suits are pending. New York City’s five pension funds and the State of Oregon, by and through the Oregon State Treasurer and the Oregon Department of Justice, on behalf of the Oregon Investment Council and the Oregon Public Employee Retirement Fund, against various directors and officers of Fox Corporation, the corporate parent of Fox News Network, LLC. Plaintiffs allege that Fox News’ leadership breached its fiduciary duties by adopting a business model that promoted or endorsed defamation by failing to establish systems or practices to minimize defamation risk despite the known risk of liability, including broadcasting false claims about election technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA.
Just the publication of the demand letters should be with millions, if not billions in PR.
4. Iran. On Joyce Vance's Substack last night, she had Mark Warner, D, VA, who holds himself out to the public to be the maven on Iran.
"For decades, American policy has been that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, so I hope our military was, indeed, successful in accomplishing that goal. But if that’s not the case, then we’ve given a false sense of comfort to the American people and to the world. In the meantime, we badly need diplomacy."
A. We can offer Iran (or any country) peaceful nuclear power, using thorium technology.
Of course, no plutonium, no bombs.
B. Iran is currently in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has formally declared Iran in non-compliance, citing failures to cooperate with IAEA safeguards and provide information about undeclared nuclear material and activities.
C. If we did not "obliterate" the Iranian nuclear program, we need to be able to identify where the materials might be, and diplomacy won't find it.
D. Yesterday morning on Heather Cox Richardson, on a post from Deepak Puri, "Many observers have connected the dots and concluded that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is seeking to drag the United States into a war with Iran and Hezbollah. But that’s only half the story. Looking at the recent events through a broader geopolitical lens, a much more sinister plan emerges: a Saudi plan to trap the United States in a permanent standoff with Tehran." - National Interest.
Heather documents that members of Trump’s inner circle, including Michael Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, hatched a plan for a joint U.S.-Russian project to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. In June 2016 they formed a company called IP3 International, short for International Peace, Power and Prosperity.
Republican senators are meeting this afternoon. The new versoin of the Big Crappy bill omits the changes recommended by the parlimentariuan, blessed be she.
That means, whatever happens, the senate version has to be radically different than the House version.
From Politico: [Republican] members continue to fight jealously to keep personal priorities in the bill — including parts of a $4 trillion package of tax cuts set to affect virtually the entire U.S. economy. Meanwhile, other lawmakers who have made the megabill into an ideological litmus test on federal spending and budget deficits are facing a put-up-or-shut-up moment after repeatedly drawing red lines and then moving forward with the legislation anyway.
Finally, a handful of key lawmakers are facing what could be existential political stakes as they brace for tough re-election contests in next year’s midterms. Many are balking at having to vote on cutbacks to safety-net programs, clean-energy projects and other federal assistance their states and constituents rely on.
Together, it’s turned the megabill’s endgame into a high-wire act — and Thune is keeping the pressure on, expecting his members will want to stay on the rope.
“We’ve cussed it. We’ve discussed it,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Friday. “But we’re gradually going from thoughtful, rational deliberation into the foothills of jackassery. I mean, we’re talking about the same thing over and over and over.”
Thune, along with Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, have all calculated that allowing more debate will only work against them. They’ve already used the threat of a federal default later this summer to move the process along — the bill includes a debt-ceiling increase — but the Independence Day deadline has emerged as a tantalizing symbolic target.
Problem is, with groups of members digging in, the state of the negotiations isn’t necessarily jibing with that timeline. Thune wouldn’t say Friday whether he had the votes to even start debate: “We’ll find out.”
Among the biggest problems for Thune going into Saturday are four GOP fiscal hawks: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is an all-but-guaranteed “no” vote, while Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida are each in close touch with Trump and pledging to act in unison.
All of them have made dire warnings about the state of the nation’s finances, and they have pushed for much deeper spending cuts than what has been on offer. They have also been coordinating with members of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-right group that has made similar fiscal demands.
Every Freedom Caucus member save for Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), its chair, has voted to advance the megabill. But they’ve been strategizing about how to bend the legislation in their direction and trying to warn they will vote against the Senate bill if it moves too far in the other direction.
Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, one of 30 House Republicans who warned senators to abide by the House bill’s fiscal framework, said Friday he remained in a dug-in “no” vote on the Senate bill. He said he was even more adamant about his position given the Senate parliamentarian had effectively vetoed a provision he secured that would make it easier to obtain rifles and silencers.
“They just need to understand that if they don’t meet that and they send us back something that blows up the deficit, it’s not going to pass -- period,” Burlison said. “And we mean it.”
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a ringleader of the fiscal conservatives, told reporters Friday there’s a “good number” of ”no” votes among Republicans in the House, “and I think the Senate knows that.”
Congressional Republicans have included many of the president's tax-related campaign promises in the bill. The Senate's text includes temporary changes that would allow Americans to deduct up to $25,000 for tip wages and $12,500 for overtime pay through 2028. The Senate version also says that overtime and tip deductions will be reduced for Americans with incomes higher than $150,000. Those limits were not included in the House version.
The Senate bill also increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 per child and adjusts the amount for inflation after 2025. It's slightly different than the House plan to temporarily increase the credit to $2,500 before cutting it back to the current level and adjusting for inflation.
In addition, the Senate text would permanently expand the standard deduction, marking a key difference from the House bill, which temporarily expands it through 2028. Senators also boosted a tax deduction for people over 65 to $6,000 through 2028, compared to $4,000 in the House bill. Both chambers included a phase out for people earning over $75,000.
Increasing the debt ceiling
The Senate is proposing raising the nation's debt limit by $5 trillion, a sizable increase compared to the House bill, which agreed to $4 trillion.
Lifting the debt limit doesn't authorize new spending. Instead, it allows the government to pay for programs that Congress has already authorized. If the cap isn't lifted and the government can't meet its obligations, then it will be at risk of default — a scenario that economists say would be catastrophic not just for the U.S., but the global financial system as a whole. The CBO estimates that without action from Congress, the U.S. will run out of money to pay its bills at some point between mid-August and the end of September.
Earlier this month, 38 members signed onto a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-N.D., criticizing the size of the increase.
Changes to SNAP
Both the Senate and House outlined reforms for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which provides aid for food to more than 40 million low-income Americans.
The Senate bill includes expanded work requirements that "able bodied adults" continue to work up to age 64. There are exemptions for parents with children under 14 and limits on the ways states can offer waivers for those requirements.
The bill would also force states to take on a greater share of the cost of providing food assistance. The amount a state owes would be based on a formula set by the percentage of erroneous payments reported each year. Those changes would go into effect in 2028.
State and Local Tax Deduction
One of the thorniest issues during negotiations has been the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT. The deduction is particularly important to a small number of GOP lawmakers in the House from blue states with high taxes, such as California and New York. Trump's 2017 tax cuts capped the SALT deduction at $10,000. The Senate plan would temporarily lift the cap to $40,000 for married couples with incomes up to $500,000. But that provision would expire after 2028 — an effort to buoy the blue-state Republicans through the 2026 midterm and 2028 election cycles, while limiting the long-term impact of the cuts on federal tax revenue.
"We have about a dozen members that are voting on this bill exclusively based on what happens with SALT. There's not a single senator on the Republican side that has that same issue," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise R-La., acknowledged to reporters on Tuesday adding an agreement on SALT "has to get resolved if you're going to have a bill to pass."
Medicaid
The Senate released an updated version of the legislation that includes several proposed changes to Medicaid, the popular, joint federal/state health care program for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans. It's remained one of the most divisive issues throughout both House and Senate negotiations.
The Senate plan would require able bodied adults to work 80 hours per month until age 65 to qualify for benefits. There are carveouts for parents of children under 14 and those with disabilities.
The plan would also cap and gradually reduce the tax states can impose on Medicaid providers. The phase out would begin in 2028, ultimately ending in a 3.5 percent cap on that tax. Several GOP senators have raised concerns that the tax is a critical funding stream for rural hospitals in particular — which could close if that income stream dries up.
In an effort to alleviate some of those concerns, Senate GOP leaders included a new $25 billion fund to support rural hospitals. That program would also begin in 2028 and funds would be spread out over five years.
What's stayed mostly the same
Extending the Trump tax cuts
The Senate bill calls for $4 trillion in tax cuts, which is slightly higher than the $3.8 trillion proposed in the House. That move would extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year, meaning that without an extension, most households would see their taxes increase.
Billions for border security
Both the Senate and the House bills allocate $46.5 billion toward completing Trump's border wall. It also puts $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and $10 billion to be used for border security more broadly. The Senate bill sets aside less funding to hire and retain more agents and officers, proposing $4.1 billion compared to the $6 billion allocated in the House. The legislation also invests in upgraded technology for screenings and surveillance of U.S. borders.
New immigration fees
Much like the House-passed bill, the Senate legislation includes a handful of new or increased fees for immigration services. The bill would create a $550 charge for work authorization applications with renewal every six months.
However, the Senate parliamentarian determined that a $1,000 fee for asylum applications did not meet the rules necessary to qualify for a simple majority vote.
A student loan overhaul
Like the House-passed bill, the Senate plan would scrap several existing repayment options, including the Biden-era SAVE program that based payments on income and household size. It replaces them with a new, standard repayment plan and an income-based plan Republicans call their "Repayment Assistance Plan." The bill would also cap the amount that parents and graduate students can take out in federal loans each year.
One difference between the two bills concerns the Pell Grant program for low-income students. The House proposed increasing the credit hours required for full-time and part-time students in order to receive Pell Grants, but the Senate has left current enrollment rules intact. The Senate bill does bar students from qualifying for a Pell Grant if they've received a full scholarship through other sources of aid.
Regulating Artificial Intelligence
The Senate proposal allocates $500 million to the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, which is focused on increasing broadband access for Americans, and specifies that the funding can be used for developing artificial intelligence models and systems. But it also requires that states only receive this funding if they do not regulate A.I. for 10 years. That rule was also laid out in the House-passed bill.
BTW last night I watched a conversation between Heather Cox Richardson, and Zach Everson re crypto, and MANY of the ways the Trump family is enriching themselves. https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social
Here is the problem Daniel, the Supreme Court ruling did not preclude Trump's executive orders being challenged in court. It just said that a lower courts rulings on anything, does not affect other districts and is specific to that case. Meaning that hundreds of thousands of us will have to have the finances, and find a competent lawyer. Trump can now have the ICE and HSI, apprehend and deport you and I, and for us to defend we will need to find a competent lawyer and have the funds to pay them.
On the positive side,it means that the ruling by that radical right judge in Amarillo, Tex that it is illegal to sell mifepristone, can not be applied to any other state or across the nation.
SCOTUS has declared that all inferior court rulings are local and specific.
As usual you didn't read what I said. I used to have this issue. Clients inserted venue clauses in their contracts to have cases heard in Miami. But if cases are filed in different jurisdictions, the cases were all removed to Detroit to the multidistrict panel. One judge in EDMI got the case.
Virtually none of the people representing these people had any experience with multi district litigation, otherwise they would have briefed it.
Daniel you said: If cases are filed throughout the country, in my experience, all cases will be sent to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), the body that determines whether civil actions pending in different federal districts should be transferred to a single district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, also known as multidistrict litigation (MDL). The JPML is comprised of seven federal district court judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States.
That is a big if and it requires coordination such that cases are filed almost simultaneously, and who is the decider to send to the judicial panel on the JPML
Daniel I am watching Ali Velshi and Elie Mystal at this moment. Elie said that John Roberts has made his bones by decerifying (refusing) class action suits, and Alito said so in his opinion in this case. ACB ignored the revolution, and reached back to a Chancery Court in England in 1787 ruled that because the High Court of Chancerry in 1787 did not use any historical analogues to rule against the king, then she couldn't rule against the Executives power, and as he said, Roberts despises class action suits, and kills them in the Shadow docket..
Our only hope is that the world lines up against these American fascists, or that America rises up against our homegrown theocratic fascists.
I don't see the world stopping Trump, not so long as the U.S. is the top consumer.
That is Trump's super power, consumption, the world leaders come crawling on their knees to Trump because we are the top consumer.
Consumption is actually a dirty word. Tuberculosis was called consumption in the 19th and early 20th century.
The only thing that consumption produces is waste.
This was the week in which we finally got a full sense of where the Supreme Court is going, and it’s absolutely terrible. The court, in wiping out lower courts' power to impose nationwide injunctions, will allow Trump to fully implement his most extreme orders before there is full judicial review.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett basically abdicated the responsibility of the courts and the Supreme Court as a check on the other branches—as the final arbiter—when she slapped at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for wanting to replace the “imperial executive” with the “imperial judiciary”, again, as if the courts weren’t meant to have the final say, and seeming to conclude the president is indeed a king.
And you are telling me not to worry,and that basically I am ignorant fool hardy for being concerned and worried. I think not.
It is not that I can't grasp the merits Daniel, it is that I am well planted in reality. And depending on Trump judges finding something unconstitutional is like waiting for Godet. Trump Judges and the SCOTUS walk by and ignore the constitution every day, as SCOTUS did in this 6-3 ruling.
Great content in your article this morning … I would readily admit I am becoming quiet . However the recent outcomes of the NYC primary is giving me hope. I started following the race when AOC stood up and said vote for this guy! Now we just need the aged dems to realize what they have, young warriors, fighters that have a message that is resonating. My 15 year old grandson in NY is excited about Mamdani .. this is the power of his influence.. while the courts have dealt a severe blow to democracy we will find a way to fight .. we simply can’t quite. My dad taught me, “where there’s a will there’s a way”! He learned it in WW2 from General Patton who he served under. Now, all I can think is thanks dad .. we sure could use you now!
My loyal cat jumps into my lap when he senses my cortisol levels rising. If I am walking, he walks with me, rubbing my legs when he can. The living beings in Nature have been, for generations, bombarded by virtually incessant human noise, of every type. Their worlds are being crushed from without and poisoned from within. Yet they sing, they fly, they run and leap and swim and crawl, slither and hop, wave around in all manners as the winds and storms push them, now very violently due to atmospheric rivers, tornadoes, hurricanes, massive heat loads in the ionosphere and lower stratosphere. They cannot afford to slip under some dome of silence.
Humans cannot overcome their damning technologies, let alone their suicidal behaviors. Read something like Google News, and you see the plethora of complete nonsense that bombards humans by the minute. 99 percent is pure junk, quack pseudo-science, gossip, fawning, addictive attention to banal and idiotic human graspings for attention. Subjective bedazzlements, gaslighted propaganda, Newspeak, massive Doublethink on every once-stable issue, create massive confusion and exhaustion.
What is left as a defense mechanism? The Dome of Silence. The short-term fix for crazymaking. Anything but - is the knee jerk response to information overload, true, false or contextually parsed to the point of dilution into irrelevance. What drives this? Addiction to mammon, to hoarding anything and everything. Humans now hoard illusions, gossip, social media pissing contests, childish behaviors from megalomaniacs who want the world to watch their weddings, listen to their drama/trauma roaring and mumbling, buy their mostly useless gadgets, feel completely helpless in exercising any logical control surrounding their personal lives. We are addicted to addiction.
Problem is, all this hubric gibberish is already under that dome. There is no silence there because the nonsense is already implanted into the brain, let alone the maladies and pains reflected in the body. The agency of hubris is violence, well documented for millennia. The top 10 percent consume 50 percent of all energy, and now need the energy of the bottom 90 to continue their preposterous pursuits of phantasmagoric self-adulation. So they will grab the oldest and most ridiculous addiction of all - religious fanaticism - to justify letting the old and the poor and the sick just die off. Expel all the peoples of color to keep the pale-faces unaware of how far superior most people of color, Africans, Latinos, Asians, First Nations, Arabs, Jews, and others, actually ARE. We white folk are, for the most part, intimidated and envious of the talents and skills of 'the other.' The Dome of Superiority has crumbled, so its contents must be expelled or killed off.
'murka - mid-2025, wallowing in chic agency about glamour, massive excess, hegemonic violence, prurient sexual addictions, desperate pissing contests about whose denial is more convincing.
I suggest we not stay silent. We need to do what our natural brethren are doing - celebrate real biotic life while we still have a chance, before it goes away, replaced by the Bezos Grin and the TFG scowl. Or are we already addicted to these as well?
If the corruption of our Executive and Legislative branches, multiplied by the staggering, nearly inconceivable corruption of our Judicial, aren’t the death knell of the Republic, they should be the death knell of the old Democratic Party. Zohran Mamdani’s massive upset victory in NYC offers real hope.
There was an article in the NYT this week that talked about all the cuts and reductions which happened during Trump's first term, and it showed that it did not hurt him, or the republicans politically. In fact, in many cases people, or at least the Trump base, blamed it on the democrats, as some of the reductions only became evident after he had left office. So, even though one might expect a huge backlash from cuts to Medicaid among other provisions affecting lower income or middle-class families, it is not assured. I am sure republican lawmakers are aware of this, and it influences their decision making.
Last week a friend asked if we could meet for dinner. I wanted Indian, but he wanted waffles at The Waffle House. Somehow, we started a brief conversation with a couple with child in the next booth whose business was adversely affected by the DOGE cuts, to the extent it pretty much put them out of business. The man said it was unfortunate, but these cuts needed to be made. And numerous polls and interviews with Trump supporters time and time again show that in spite of all the heavy handed and questionable policies, they still support him and 10-1 do not regret their choice.
And then, you have to wonder, if the pendulum does swing the other way, (assuming we will still have true elections), how much time and work it will take to bring back the democratic institutions that have been so shredded.
Thank you, Daniel Solomon, William Farrar, Gene Wood, Mick, et al for a lively conversation. For me the issue of palefaces feeling threatened by all that non-white competition (thank you, Mick) is so much the foundation that causes this conversation. Straight back to Obama sticking a finger in the eye of the beast at the press dinner to January 6 to the present, the Nazi obsession with the complexion of America created this presidency. I wish people recognized the implications of the Human Genome Project. There is little to no commentary on the absurdity of no tax on tips until income exceeds 150K and the slimy generosity of a $200 additional child tax credit. I am cheered by the image of a fifteen year old feeling hopeful in this world. I wish him continued optimism.
I have to give Brett Baer credit for agreeing to an interview with David Remnick on NPR today, The New Yorker segment. David Remnick was polite, but his questions were very direct. Brett did okay, but had to be careful to protect his job. David Remnick is an excellent interviewer. Worth listening to for some insight into Fox News, and how someone who has some credibility balances keeping his job with trying to maintain some degree of objectively.
Trump's trying to dominate and retaliate against everyone, especially the press. The MSM may be within striking distance, but there are just too damn many independent resources gaining steam. He will never be able to silence them all. There are many youthful participants, and they are often networking with one another instead of competing. It's a beautiful thing.
One of them just reported that a Russian TV personality was bragging that Trump will not do anything when Putin tries to take Alaska back. This could get interesting, since it is one of TRump's red states. Our former ally, Canada's PM Carney, will ask "who's the daddy now", while they watch the fight. Alaskans have a "few" guns and know what to do. Sarah Palin might be on our side, if TRump is. BUT, there is no guarantee TRump wouldn't give it up in one of his deals with Putin!
STAY LOUD! Resist---we need to show the psychos we are coming for them. More and more the Dems in Congress are talking prosecutions. See you in the streets, especially on the 4th.
On the other hand, recent reporting from The Times of London indicates Russia has suffered significant casualties in Ukraine, potentially reaching one million personnel. The British defense ministry estimates Russia loses around 1,000 soldiers daily, according to CNN. This aligns with broader narratives suggesting challenges for Russia's military and strategic goals in the region.
1. SCOTUS deathblow. All is not lost. The ruling does not change the status of anyone subject to birthright citizenship, and gives lower courts 30 days to further consider the issue. Advocates immediately filed a class-action lawsuit to block Trump's plan, which would end automatic citizenship for babies born in the United States unless their parents were also citizens or legal, permanent residents.
If cases are filed throughout the country, in my experience, all cases will be sent to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), the body that determines whether civil actions pending in different federal districts should be transferred to a single district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, also known as multidistrict litigation (MDL). The JPML is comprised of seven federal district court judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States. They are responsible for deciding if cases should be centralized and, if so, which court and judge should oversee the pretrial proceedings.
2. Point of no return. Here in Baghdad By the Sea, the Proud Boys have turned against Trump.
The rationale is they are antisemites and will not support Israel. I assume that other white supremacist groups have a similar position.
3. Suing Fox. For years I couldn't understand why HRC and Biden and others who are defamed don't sue. I wish Newsom good luck. Fox is extremely vulnerable. Besides Newsom, they have a pending Smartmatic suit which may be worth $billions and shareholder derivitive suits are pending. New York City’s five pension funds and the State of Oregon, by and through the Oregon State Treasurer and the Oregon Department of Justice, on behalf of the Oregon Investment Council and the Oregon Public Employee Retirement Fund, against various directors and officers of Fox Corporation, the corporate parent of Fox News Network, LLC. Plaintiffs allege that Fox News’ leadership breached its fiduciary duties by adopting a business model that promoted or endorsed defamation by failing to establish systems or practices to minimize defamation risk despite the known risk of liability, including broadcasting false claims about election technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA.
Just the publication of the demand letters should be with millions, if not billions in PR.
4. Iran. On Joyce Vance's Substack last night, she had Mark Warner, D, VA, who holds himself out to the public to be the maven on Iran.
"For decades, American policy has been that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, so I hope our military was, indeed, successful in accomplishing that goal. But if that’s not the case, then we’ve given a false sense of comfort to the American people and to the world. In the meantime, we badly need diplomacy."
A. We can offer Iran (or any country) peaceful nuclear power, using thorium technology.
Of course, no plutonium, no bombs.
B. Iran is currently in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has formally declared Iran in non-compliance, citing failures to cooperate with IAEA safeguards and provide information about undeclared nuclear material and activities.
C. If we did not "obliterate" the Iranian nuclear program, we need to be able to identify where the materials might be, and diplomacy won't find it.
D. Yesterday morning on Heather Cox Richardson, on a post from Deepak Puri, "Many observers have connected the dots and concluded that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is seeking to drag the United States into a war with Iran and Hezbollah. But that’s only half the story. Looking at the recent events through a broader geopolitical lens, a much more sinister plan emerges: a Saudi plan to trap the United States in a permanent standoff with Tehran." - National Interest.
Heather documents that members of Trump’s inner circle, including Michael Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, hatched a plan for a joint U.S.-Russian project to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. In June 2016 they formed a company called IP3 International, short for International Peace, Power and Prosperity.
Puri's Substack. https://thedemlabs.org/2025/06/19/trumps-decision-to-bomb-iran-driven-by-gifts-from-irans-enemies/
Ask Trump whether he had any contact with them. Whether he had an undisclosed conflict. Did Hegseth know this?
Please call Kushner, Flynn to hearings and get them on the record.
Republican senators are meeting this afternoon. The new versoin of the Big Crappy bill omits the changes recommended by the parlimentariuan, blessed be she.
That means, whatever happens, the senate version has to be radically different than the House version.
From Politico: [Republican] members continue to fight jealously to keep personal priorities in the bill — including parts of a $4 trillion package of tax cuts set to affect virtually the entire U.S. economy. Meanwhile, other lawmakers who have made the megabill into an ideological litmus test on federal spending and budget deficits are facing a put-up-or-shut-up moment after repeatedly drawing red lines and then moving forward with the legislation anyway.
Finally, a handful of key lawmakers are facing what could be existential political stakes as they brace for tough re-election contests in next year’s midterms. Many are balking at having to vote on cutbacks to safety-net programs, clean-energy projects and other federal assistance their states and constituents rely on.
Together, it’s turned the megabill’s endgame into a high-wire act — and Thune is keeping the pressure on, expecting his members will want to stay on the rope.
“We’ve cussed it. We’ve discussed it,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Friday. “But we’re gradually going from thoughtful, rational deliberation into the foothills of jackassery. I mean, we’re talking about the same thing over and over and over.”
Thune, along with Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, have all calculated that allowing more debate will only work against them. They’ve already used the threat of a federal default later this summer to move the process along — the bill includes a debt-ceiling increase — but the Independence Day deadline has emerged as a tantalizing symbolic target.
Problem is, with groups of members digging in, the state of the negotiations isn’t necessarily jibing with that timeline. Thune wouldn’t say Friday whether he had the votes to even start debate: “We’ll find out.”
Among the biggest problems for Thune going into Saturday are four GOP fiscal hawks: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is an all-but-guaranteed “no” vote, while Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida are each in close touch with Trump and pledging to act in unison.
All of them have made dire warnings about the state of the nation’s finances, and they have pushed for much deeper spending cuts than what has been on offer. They have also been coordinating with members of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-right group that has made similar fiscal demands.
Every Freedom Caucus member save for Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), its chair, has voted to advance the megabill. But they’ve been strategizing about how to bend the legislation in their direction and trying to warn they will vote against the Senate bill if it moves too far in the other direction.
Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, one of 30 House Republicans who warned senators to abide by the House bill’s fiscal framework, said Friday he remained in a dug-in “no” vote on the Senate bill. He said he was even more adamant about his position given the Senate parliamentarian had effectively vetoed a provision he secured that would make it easier to obtain rifles and silencers.
“They just need to understand that if they don’t meet that and they send us back something that blows up the deficit, it’s not going to pass -- period,” Burlison said. “And we mean it.”
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a ringleader of the fiscal conservatives, told reporters Friday there’s a “good number” of ”no” votes among Republicans in the House, “and I think the Senate knows that.”
NPR Has briefed the issues today:
Some of the biggest changes
Tax incentives
Congressional Republicans have included many of the president's tax-related campaign promises in the bill. The Senate's text includes temporary changes that would allow Americans to deduct up to $25,000 for tip wages and $12,500 for overtime pay through 2028. The Senate version also says that overtime and tip deductions will be reduced for Americans with incomes higher than $150,000. Those limits were not included in the House version.
The Senate bill also increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 per child and adjusts the amount for inflation after 2025. It's slightly different than the House plan to temporarily increase the credit to $2,500 before cutting it back to the current level and adjusting for inflation.
In addition, the Senate text would permanently expand the standard deduction, marking a key difference from the House bill, which temporarily expands it through 2028. Senators also boosted a tax deduction for people over 65 to $6,000 through 2028, compared to $4,000 in the House bill. Both chambers included a phase out for people earning over $75,000.
Increasing the debt ceiling
The Senate is proposing raising the nation's debt limit by $5 trillion, a sizable increase compared to the House bill, which agreed to $4 trillion.
Lifting the debt limit doesn't authorize new spending. Instead, it allows the government to pay for programs that Congress has already authorized. If the cap isn't lifted and the government can't meet its obligations, then it will be at risk of default — a scenario that economists say would be catastrophic not just for the U.S., but the global financial system as a whole. The CBO estimates that without action from Congress, the U.S. will run out of money to pay its bills at some point between mid-August and the end of September.
Earlier this month, 38 members signed onto a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-N.D., criticizing the size of the increase.
Changes to SNAP
Both the Senate and House outlined reforms for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which provides aid for food to more than 40 million low-income Americans.
The Senate bill includes expanded work requirements that "able bodied adults" continue to work up to age 64. There are exemptions for parents with children under 14 and limits on the ways states can offer waivers for those requirements.
The bill would also force states to take on a greater share of the cost of providing food assistance. The amount a state owes would be based on a formula set by the percentage of erroneous payments reported each year. Those changes would go into effect in 2028.
State and Local Tax Deduction
One of the thorniest issues during negotiations has been the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT. The deduction is particularly important to a small number of GOP lawmakers in the House from blue states with high taxes, such as California and New York. Trump's 2017 tax cuts capped the SALT deduction at $10,000. The Senate plan would temporarily lift the cap to $40,000 for married couples with incomes up to $500,000. But that provision would expire after 2028 — an effort to buoy the blue-state Republicans through the 2026 midterm and 2028 election cycles, while limiting the long-term impact of the cuts on federal tax revenue.
"We have about a dozen members that are voting on this bill exclusively based on what happens with SALT. There's not a single senator on the Republican side that has that same issue," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise R-La., acknowledged to reporters on Tuesday adding an agreement on SALT "has to get resolved if you're going to have a bill to pass."
Medicaid
The Senate released an updated version of the legislation that includes several proposed changes to Medicaid, the popular, joint federal/state health care program for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans. It's remained one of the most divisive issues throughout both House and Senate negotiations.
The Senate plan would require able bodied adults to work 80 hours per month until age 65 to qualify for benefits. There are carveouts for parents of children under 14 and those with disabilities.
The plan would also cap and gradually reduce the tax states can impose on Medicaid providers. The phase out would begin in 2028, ultimately ending in a 3.5 percent cap on that tax. Several GOP senators have raised concerns that the tax is a critical funding stream for rural hospitals in particular — which could close if that income stream dries up.
In an effort to alleviate some of those concerns, Senate GOP leaders included a new $25 billion fund to support rural hospitals. That program would also begin in 2028 and funds would be spread out over five years.
What's stayed mostly the same
Extending the Trump tax cuts
The Senate bill calls for $4 trillion in tax cuts, which is slightly higher than the $3.8 trillion proposed in the House. That move would extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year, meaning that without an extension, most households would see their taxes increase.
Billions for border security
Both the Senate and the House bills allocate $46.5 billion toward completing Trump's border wall. It also puts $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and $10 billion to be used for border security more broadly. The Senate bill sets aside less funding to hire and retain more agents and officers, proposing $4.1 billion compared to the $6 billion allocated in the House. The legislation also invests in upgraded technology for screenings and surveillance of U.S. borders.
New immigration fees
Much like the House-passed bill, the Senate legislation includes a handful of new or increased fees for immigration services. The bill would create a $550 charge for work authorization applications with renewal every six months.
However, the Senate parliamentarian determined that a $1,000 fee for asylum applications did not meet the rules necessary to qualify for a simple majority vote.
A student loan overhaul
Like the House-passed bill, the Senate plan would scrap several existing repayment options, including the Biden-era SAVE program that based payments on income and household size. It replaces them with a new, standard repayment plan and an income-based plan Republicans call their "Repayment Assistance Plan." The bill would also cap the amount that parents and graduate students can take out in federal loans each year.
One difference between the two bills concerns the Pell Grant program for low-income students. The House proposed increasing the credit hours required for full-time and part-time students in order to receive Pell Grants, but the Senate has left current enrollment rules intact. The Senate bill does bar students from qualifying for a Pell Grant if they've received a full scholarship through other sources of aid.
Regulating Artificial Intelligence
The Senate proposal allocates $500 million to the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, which is focused on increasing broadband access for Americans, and specifies that the funding can be used for developing artificial intelligence models and systems. But it also requires that states only receive this funding if they do not regulate A.I. for 10 years. That rule was also laid out in the House-passed bill.
BTW last night I watched a conversation between Heather Cox Richardson, and Zach Everson re crypto, and MANY of the ways the Trump family is enriching themselves. https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social
Trump's stablecoin chosen for $2 billion Abu Dhabi investment in Binance, co-founder says. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/wlfs-zach-witkoff-usd1-selected-official-stablecoin-mgx-investment-binance-2025-05-01/
Here is the problem Daniel, the Supreme Court ruling did not preclude Trump's executive orders being challenged in court. It just said that a lower courts rulings on anything, does not affect other districts and is specific to that case. Meaning that hundreds of thousands of us will have to have the finances, and find a competent lawyer. Trump can now have the ICE and HSI, apprehend and deport you and I, and for us to defend we will need to find a competent lawyer and have the funds to pay them.
On the positive side,it means that the ruling by that radical right judge in Amarillo, Tex that it is illegal to sell mifepristone, can not be applied to any other state or across the nation.
SCOTUS has declared that all inferior court rulings are local and specific.
As usual you didn't read what I said. I used to have this issue. Clients inserted venue clauses in their contracts to have cases heard in Miami. But if cases are filed in different jurisdictions, the cases were all removed to Detroit to the multidistrict panel. One judge in EDMI got the case.
Virtually none of the people representing these people had any experience with multi district litigation, otherwise they would have briefed it.
Daniel you said: If cases are filed throughout the country, in my experience, all cases will be sent to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), the body that determines whether civil actions pending in different federal districts should be transferred to a single district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, also known as multidistrict litigation (MDL). The JPML is comprised of seven federal district court judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States.
That is a big if and it requires coordination such that cases are filed almost simultaneously, and who is the decider to send to the judicial panel on the JPML
On the merits (a concept you obviously cannot grap) even Trump judges will find it unconstitutional.
Daniel I am watching Ali Velshi and Elie Mystal at this moment. Elie said that John Roberts has made his bones by decerifying (refusing) class action suits, and Alito said so in his opinion in this case. ACB ignored the revolution, and reached back to a Chancery Court in England in 1787 ruled that because the High Court of Chancerry in 1787 did not use any historical analogues to rule against the king, then she couldn't rule against the Executives power, and as he said, Roberts despises class action suits, and kills them in the Shadow docket..
Our only hope is that the world lines up against these American fascists, or that America rises up against our homegrown theocratic fascists.
I don't see the world stopping Trump, not so long as the U.S. is the top consumer.
That is Trump's super power, consumption, the world leaders come crawling on their knees to Trump because we are the top consumer.
Consumption is actually a dirty word. Tuberculosis was called consumption in the 19th and early 20th century.
The only thing that consumption produces is waste.
None of these people have any actual experience.
I personally hate class actions. Too complicated. But this is a one shot, Constitutional issue.
From the Signorele Report: Quote
This was the week in which we finally got a full sense of where the Supreme Court is going, and it’s absolutely terrible. The court, in wiping out lower courts' power to impose nationwide injunctions, will allow Trump to fully implement his most extreme orders before there is full judicial review.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett basically abdicated the responsibility of the courts and the Supreme Court as a check on the other branches—as the final arbiter—when she slapped at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for wanting to replace the “imperial executive” with the “imperial judiciary”, again, as if the courts weren’t meant to have the final say, and seeming to conclude the president is indeed a king.
And you are telling me not to worry,and that basically I am ignorant fool hardy for being concerned and worried. I think not.
I tell you all is not lost.
It is not that I can't grasp the merits Daniel, it is that I am well planted in reality. And depending on Trump judges finding something unconstitutional is like waiting for Godet. Trump Judges and the SCOTUS walk by and ignore the constitution every day, as SCOTUS did in this 6-3 ruling.
Procedure is not substance. They didn't rule on the constitutionality of the exeecutive order on the 14th amendment.
Great content in your article this morning … I would readily admit I am becoming quiet . However the recent outcomes of the NYC primary is giving me hope. I started following the race when AOC stood up and said vote for this guy! Now we just need the aged dems to realize what they have, young warriors, fighters that have a message that is resonating. My 15 year old grandson in NY is excited about Mamdani .. this is the power of his influence.. while the courts have dealt a severe blow to democracy we will find a way to fight .. we simply can’t quite. My dad taught me, “where there’s a will there’s a way”! He learned it in WW2 from General Patton who he served under. Now, all I can think is thanks dad .. we sure could use you now!
My loyal cat jumps into my lap when he senses my cortisol levels rising. If I am walking, he walks with me, rubbing my legs when he can. The living beings in Nature have been, for generations, bombarded by virtually incessant human noise, of every type. Their worlds are being crushed from without and poisoned from within. Yet they sing, they fly, they run and leap and swim and crawl, slither and hop, wave around in all manners as the winds and storms push them, now very violently due to atmospheric rivers, tornadoes, hurricanes, massive heat loads in the ionosphere and lower stratosphere. They cannot afford to slip under some dome of silence.
Humans cannot overcome their damning technologies, let alone their suicidal behaviors. Read something like Google News, and you see the plethora of complete nonsense that bombards humans by the minute. 99 percent is pure junk, quack pseudo-science, gossip, fawning, addictive attention to banal and idiotic human graspings for attention. Subjective bedazzlements, gaslighted propaganda, Newspeak, massive Doublethink on every once-stable issue, create massive confusion and exhaustion.
What is left as a defense mechanism? The Dome of Silence. The short-term fix for crazymaking. Anything but - is the knee jerk response to information overload, true, false or contextually parsed to the point of dilution into irrelevance. What drives this? Addiction to mammon, to hoarding anything and everything. Humans now hoard illusions, gossip, social media pissing contests, childish behaviors from megalomaniacs who want the world to watch their weddings, listen to their drama/trauma roaring and mumbling, buy their mostly useless gadgets, feel completely helpless in exercising any logical control surrounding their personal lives. We are addicted to addiction.
Problem is, all this hubric gibberish is already under that dome. There is no silence there because the nonsense is already implanted into the brain, let alone the maladies and pains reflected in the body. The agency of hubris is violence, well documented for millennia. The top 10 percent consume 50 percent of all energy, and now need the energy of the bottom 90 to continue their preposterous pursuits of phantasmagoric self-adulation. So they will grab the oldest and most ridiculous addiction of all - religious fanaticism - to justify letting the old and the poor and the sick just die off. Expel all the peoples of color to keep the pale-faces unaware of how far superior most people of color, Africans, Latinos, Asians, First Nations, Arabs, Jews, and others, actually ARE. We white folk are, for the most part, intimidated and envious of the talents and skills of 'the other.' The Dome of Superiority has crumbled, so its contents must be expelled or killed off.
'murka - mid-2025, wallowing in chic agency about glamour, massive excess, hegemonic violence, prurient sexual addictions, desperate pissing contests about whose denial is more convincing.
I suggest we not stay silent. We need to do what our natural brethren are doing - celebrate real biotic life while we still have a chance, before it goes away, replaced by the Bezos Grin and the TFG scowl. Or are we already addicted to these as well?
If the corruption of our Executive and Legislative branches, multiplied by the staggering, nearly inconceivable corruption of our Judicial, aren’t the death knell of the Republic, they should be the death knell of the old Democratic Party. Zohran Mamdani’s massive upset victory in NYC offers real hope.
There was an article in the NYT this week that talked about all the cuts and reductions which happened during Trump's first term, and it showed that it did not hurt him, or the republicans politically. In fact, in many cases people, or at least the Trump base, blamed it on the democrats, as some of the reductions only became evident after he had left office. So, even though one might expect a huge backlash from cuts to Medicaid among other provisions affecting lower income or middle-class families, it is not assured. I am sure republican lawmakers are aware of this, and it influences their decision making.
Last week a friend asked if we could meet for dinner. I wanted Indian, but he wanted waffles at The Waffle House. Somehow, we started a brief conversation with a couple with child in the next booth whose business was adversely affected by the DOGE cuts, to the extent it pretty much put them out of business. The man said it was unfortunate, but these cuts needed to be made. And numerous polls and interviews with Trump supporters time and time again show that in spite of all the heavy handed and questionable policies, they still support him and 10-1 do not regret their choice.
And then, you have to wonder, if the pendulum does swing the other way, (assuming we will still have true elections), how much time and work it will take to bring back the democratic institutions that have been so shredded.
Thank you, Daniel Solomon, William Farrar, Gene Wood, Mick, et al for a lively conversation. For me the issue of palefaces feeling threatened by all that non-white competition (thank you, Mick) is so much the foundation that causes this conversation. Straight back to Obama sticking a finger in the eye of the beast at the press dinner to January 6 to the present, the Nazi obsession with the complexion of America created this presidency. I wish people recognized the implications of the Human Genome Project. There is little to no commentary on the absurdity of no tax on tips until income exceeds 150K and the slimy generosity of a $200 additional child tax credit. I am cheered by the image of a fifteen year old feeling hopeful in this world. I wish him continued optimism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-9wXQpzESo
I also mourn the loss of Bill Moyers,a person I followed and admired for years. RIP
I have to give Brett Baer credit for agreeing to an interview with David Remnick on NPR today, The New Yorker segment. David Remnick was polite, but his questions were very direct. Brett did okay, but had to be careful to protect his job. David Remnick is an excellent interviewer. Worth listening to for some insight into Fox News, and how someone who has some credibility balances keeping his job with trying to maintain some degree of objectively.
Thanks, Thom.
Whack-A-Mole
Trump's trying to dominate and retaliate against everyone, especially the press. The MSM may be within striking distance, but there are just too damn many independent resources gaining steam. He will never be able to silence them all. There are many youthful participants, and they are often networking with one another instead of competing. It's a beautiful thing.
One of them just reported that a Russian TV personality was bragging that Trump will not do anything when Putin tries to take Alaska back. This could get interesting, since it is one of TRump's red states. Our former ally, Canada's PM Carney, will ask "who's the daddy now", while they watch the fight. Alaskans have a "few" guns and know what to do. Sarah Palin might be on our side, if TRump is. BUT, there is no guarantee TRump wouldn't give it up in one of his deals with Putin!
STAY LOUD! Resist---we need to show the psychos we are coming for them. More and more the Dems in Congress are talking prosecutions. See you in the streets, especially on the 4th.
On the other hand, recent reporting from The Times of London indicates Russia has suffered significant casualties in Ukraine, potentially reaching one million personnel. The British defense ministry estimates Russia loses around 1,000 soldiers daily, according to CNN. This aligns with broader narratives suggesting challenges for Russia's military and strategic goals in the region.
Check out Silicon Curtain. https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconCurtain
Today: Ukraine Strikes Airbase Deep Inside Russia
Putin's War is Burning Up the Russian Economy
Yesterday: BREAKING NEWS: Shocking Military Sabotage in Germany
Is Russia’s Economy Finally Breaking Down?
Also see Jason Jay Smart, Russia's Banking System on BRINK of Collapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iJ6nQM-a8w
Thank You.
I think.