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Evening Shade---Resistance Rising---Sunday [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-02

(Or NOT As the CASE MAY BE)

YOU WILL FIND in the DIARIES a LOT of POLITICS

THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS

EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER

RULES IN THE DIARY

WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE

YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY

===

It’s already old news, but in case you missed it, Musk really does have the keys to national payment system.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit… The Treasury Department carries out payments submitted by agencies across the government, disbursing more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023. Access to the system has historically been closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government. (New York Times: paywall)

What does it mean? Josh Marshall has a chilling take on what the media hasn’t mentioned and how Musk plans to “save the nation $4B a day.”

===

To pay for tax cuts to the rich and to corporations, the new administration plans to cut services to low income Americans. Medicaid is the cost cutting target.

To pay for new tax cuts, the House Republicans’ proposal floats a series of potential overhauls of government programs. One major focus is possible cuts to Medicaid, the health care program for people with low incomes that is administered by the states. Medicaid expansion was a key tenet of the Affordable Care Act, passed under President Barack Obama... In the intervening years, several states reversed course, and the program has expanded the number of people enrolled in Medicaid by more than 20 million, as of last year. (ProPublica)

Does the party of “we need more babies!” realize that 41% of American births are paid for by Medicaid and that the average cost of birth is $18,865 ?

===

x The problem with American political discourse is that you can’t explain the impact of tariffs to people dumb enough to think DEI programs cause plane crashes. — Dare Obasanjo (@carnage4life.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 4:07 PM

===

x The National Association of Home Builders explains what happens if we make inputs for home construction, such as Canadian lumber, more expensive.



[image or embed] — Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 2:55 PM

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Who’s filing lawsuits about all this craziness? Can’t tell the players without a program! Here’s the list:

x Our Litigation Tracker is now souped up with interactive Table. ⬇️ Now tracking 23 cases and expecting more to drop soon. Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions

www.justsecurity.org/107087/track...



[image or embed] — Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 6:03 AM

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Sunday Science

With an anti-science president, politics tops this week’s science news. Trump orders the USDA to take down web sites that mention climate change.

On Thursday, the Trump administration ordered the US agriculture department to to take down its websites documenting or referencing the climate crisis. By Friday, the landing pages on the United States Forest Service website for key resources, research and adaptation tools – including those that provide vital context and vulnerability assessments for wildfires – had gone dark, leaving behind an error message or just a single line: “You are not authorized to access this page.” (The Guardian)

===

The NIH and CDC are hit by new EO.

Although awarded grants are so far safe, grant renewals or new proposals are a different story; if they involve DEI, they will not be funded or will have to remove that component, NIH sources say. "Our country is quite literally hobbling ourselves by cancelling these programs," which support undergraduates, grad students and postdocs "who bring important, unique and novel insights and breadth to solving challenging, scientific problems," says cell biologist Needhi Bhalla of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Bhalla is also concerned that training grants approved but not yet awarded will not funded, and that submitted applications will not be reviewed. (Science)

But those nice folks in that country that Trump wants to annex are unfailingly generous:

x To our American friends who may now be struggling to find health information on US websites: Please check out the Public Health Agency of Canada's website for helpful resources, updated dashboards & practical health tips. 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 canada.ca/en/public-he...



[image or embed] — Isaac Bogoch (@isaacbogoch.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 5:06 AM

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Where does AI get the massive amount of power it needs? Microsoft and Amazon are pushing to reopen old nuclear power plants risking an increasing amount of nuclear waste.

In September Constellation Energy announced plans to restart a shuttered reactor at Three Mile Island, prodded by Microsoft, which will need many gigawatts of power to perform extensive AI calculations in its expanding fleet of data centers. Amazon followed suit and announced in November that it will invest $334 million to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) at Hanford, site of the world’s first plutonium-production facility. (Scientific American. Bolding mine.)

===

COVID vaccination may not prevent COVID but it can blunt the immune over-reactions that have been deadly.

The authors compared individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the Delta wave with or without prior vaccination. They found that prior vaccination tamped down excessive inflammatory responses often associated with more severe disease, particularly in monocytes and natural killer cells. (Science)

===

The FDA approves Journavx (suzetrigine), a non-opioid pain killer.

For decades, people experiencing pain have had two options. One has been over-the-counter medications that offer limited relief, including acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as aspirin and ibuprofen. The other has been opioids, with their risk of addiction and adverse side effects... Suzetrigine, along with similar new medications that are now being tested, will provide a much needed third option for people who seek pain relief. Because the drug works only on peripheral nerve cells and not on the brain or spinal cord, it does not carry the risk of addiction that opioids do. (Scientific American)

===

It’s a big day! National Tater Tot Day!

x YouTube Video

And National Heavenly Hash Day!

x YouTube Video

And of course, Groundhog Day! In which a man doomed to repeat the same day over and over comes out of his hole to decide whether winter will continue six more weeks, or something.

x YouTube Video

In Ireland, it’s Brigid’s Day or Saint Brigid’s Day, depending on whether one refers to the Celtic goddess or the Catholic saint. Whether Brigid or St. Brigid, she is the patron of the unusual combination of blacksmithing, poetry, learning, healing, protection, livestock and dairy production. In some parts of the world the day marks the first day of spring (regardless of what groundhogs may say.)

HAPPY SPRING!

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