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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Screwing the public by obscuring what the House is doing [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-19
Jonathan Cohn/The Bulwark:
How to Take Medicaid from Millions of Americans, in Less Than 72 Hours There’s a reason Republicans are in such a rush to get Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” through Congress. But the focus on the delays can be a bit of a distraction. Because right now the real question is not why the Republicans are moving so slowly but why they are moving so quickly—and what they don’t want you to see… But, then, there’s reason to believe GOP leaders are trying their best not to make the legislation’s true nature clear to members—or the public, for that matter. The polling on Medicaid cuts is clear: Voters oppose them strongly. GOP officials know this, which is why they have spent so much time denying they are making cuts to Medicaid—or, at least, framing them as a way to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” and to strengthen the program for the “truly vulnerable.” But the longer the debate goes on, the more indefensible those claims look. Every passing day gives analysts more time to publish damning information, like these analyses showing coverage losses by state and congressional district. And the more this information gets out, the easier it is for organizations and activists to press their case.
There’s not much opinion written at this point about former President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis (other than that it sucks), so no pieces on the topic are included. That said, best wishes to the family from all of us.
Back to politics.
x “Hospitals go out of business when Medicare and Medicaid are cut. Period."
Story:
https://t.co/dMVgRotrEF pic.twitter.com/1kZOcdlA6M — Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 18, 2025
Norm Eisen/The Contrarian:
SCOTUS Judo Flips Trump If there is a single trend that has brought us from the scary dictatorial pomp and power of Donald Trump on Jan. 20 to the corrupt, clownish chaos of his administration today, it is Trump’s struggles with the law—above all with the Supreme Court. On Friday, he suffered another blow…and he knows it: In a 7-2 decision that represents the latest in a virtually uninterrupted streak of failures for him at the High Court, it ruled that deportees must be given real due process–even alleged gang members. The Trump authoritarian approach of “notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.
x The professor is in!
Trade agreement = marriage
Trade deal = dating
Trade talks/chats = just texting@JustinWolfers breaks down Trump's trade war and tariff negotiations like only he can! pic.twitter.com/oXo6fZicO4 — Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) May 16, 2025
New York Times:
One Thing Helping Trump’s Approval Rating: Some People Are Not Paying Attention Voters were more likely to approve of President Trump’s job performance if they had not been following some of the major news stories of his first 100 days in office, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll found… There is some evidence that Mr. Trump’s approval ratings may be falling among voters who pay little attention to the news. It is harder to know whether that drop is more because they are unhappy with current economic conditions and blaming the new administration or because they are dissatisfied with the news that has filtered through.
This is really the story of the last few years. if you get what news you do get from social media, you are more likely a Trump supporter. But that’s changing and prices are going to have a lot to do with it. See Daily Mail:
Target worker exposes MASSIVE tariff price hike for popular items: 'Kinda scared' For months, big retailers have been warning that prices will rise. Now, thanks to insider information from Target workers, the extent of the raises are becoming apparent. Staff say it is just the beginning. A $9.99 USB-C cord from the store's in-house Heyday brand is now ringing up at $17.99, according to a self-identified employee on Reddit.
That Reddit post is what the above NYT piece is referring to. If Reddit is where you get your political news…
x As usual, @Sulliview is spot on
Yes, the media’s Biden coverage was flawed. But its reporting on Trump was far worse | Margaret Sullivan | The Guardian
https://t.co/rrW58JBwoQ — Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) May 17, 2025
Andy Craig/The UnPopulist:
Trump’s Effort to become the Supreme Leader Has Roots in a Nazi Philosopher His lawless view of his sovereign powers was articulated by Carl Schmitt The embrace of authoritarian notions isn’t just a matter of base emotional impulses dressed up in formalistic language. There’s a deadly serious set of ideas behind it, revealing the disturbingly widespread influence of Carl Schmitt, a German jurist and political philosopher who became a prominent propagandist during the early years of the Nazi regime. You might think a literal Nazi would be thoroughly discredited, but the grim reality is he has been embraced as a respectable thinker and even a laudable role model long after the regime he served died in a bunker in Berlin. Trump himself has surely never studied Schmitt. But those around him, influencing him, and shaping the movement which supports him, certainly have. Many say so openly, which puts them in the notorious company of Vladimir Putin’s pet “philosopher,” Aleksandr Dugin.
Don Moynihan/Can We Still Govern?
What DOGE gets wrong about tech and government Lessons learned by civic tech, forgotten by DOGE This sounds obvious to say, but people handed extraordinary power that affects the lives of others should know what they are doing. If they don’t know important stuff, they should want to learn it before exercising consequential decisions. But DOGE has failed to meet even these banal standards. A trademark of DOGE was the toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance. Some DOGE members have real and impressive achievements, some do not. But all of those achievements are in the private sector. They know almost nothing about government except conspiracy theories from the internet, or negative interactions with the regulators who oversee their businesses. They did not understand where government spent its money, and that it was not full of waste. They could have talked to career public employees or nonpartisan government experts. But they didn’t because they did not want to know. Their closest advisors about how government worked were partisan ideologues who want to upend the constitution, Stephen Miller and Russ Vought. Random X posters seem to have more input on the fate of USAID than any policy experts.
x This will end up making us all a lot less healthy and safe pic.twitter.com/atgHRo2j6h — Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) May 18, 2025
Greg Sargent/TNR:
Trump’s Embrace of White South Africans Takes Dark, Unnerving New Turn First, Trump officials cut off refugee resettlement from all over the world. Then they got those white Afrikaners here in three months. Funny how that happened. But there’s an even more glaring absurdity here that emerges if you compare the plight of these Afrikaners with that of another distinct population of refugees. I’m talking about the refugees from all over the world, likely in the thousands, who had already received approval to come here under President Joe Biden, but have seen their resettlement interrupted as it was happening, in an act of extraordinary cruelty from Trump and fascist sidekick Stephen Miller. They are now waiting abroad, in limbo, uncertain whether they will ever attain refuge in the United States. This particular contrast makes the whole saga even more vile. Here’s why: In February, in a lawsuit brought on behalf of refugees granted protections under Biden, a court temporarily ruled against Trump and directed the government to continue resettling some of them. Trump officials have delayed acting on this for months. One of their excuses has been that the resettlement infrastructure has badly decayed on their watch (which is their own doing). Now contrast this with what happened to the Afrikaners
Todd S Purdum/New York Times:
What Desi Arnaz Could Teach Hollywood Today Arnaz, a Cuban immigrant and self-taught showman, had an idea: The couple would undertake an old-fashioned vaudeville tour of major cities around the country. He and Ball would demonstrate the real-life chemistry that he knew would click with Americans if they only had a chance to see the act. Racism was a fact of daily life even in Arnaz’s adopted hometown, Los Angeles, where some restaurants still refused service to Latinos. The term D.E.I. did not yet exist, but Arnaz’s gambit amounted to a bold push for diversity, equity and inclusion in the white-bread monoculture of a dawning mass medium that was sponsor-driven and cautious to a fault.
x Election results confirm that Bucharest mayor Nicusor Dan will be the next president of Romania.
Romania is not going right-wing nationalist; runner-up candidate George Simion wanted to restore pre-WW2 borders and aligned himself strongly with the Trump administration pic.twitter.com/RNtbQc9g9Q — Populism Updates (@PopulismUpdates) May 18, 2025
x I cannot overstate the extent to which the pro-Russian MAGA types in US government were fixated on this country’s political future. If these exit polls hold up, it’ll be a bitter defeat for them.
https://t.co/Nuo7zTxzJg — Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) May 18, 2025
David Shuster on Marjorie Taylor Greene and Dan Goldman’s fighting back against the garbage (yes, Democrats do fight back):
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