Time to Do Some Shots 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮

Shots 💉 💉 💉?: Hug your kids, stock up on masks, make sure you are up to date on your tetanus, shingles, and pneumonia shots and maybe do a few shots too because Trump has nominated RFK Jr to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  To call RFK, who’s all in on ivermectin and steroids,  a vaccine skeptic, doesn’t do justice to his deadly views about vaccines.  He’s far more than skeptical, he thinks vaccines are dangerous, e coli laden raw milk however is fine.  And please, whatever you do, don’t buy his word salad assertions that he’s been misunderstood and just wants to see vaccines more “rigorously tested,” because they are rigorously tested and that’s just code for saying he wants them canceled.  Get familiar with the symptoms and dangers of polio, whooping cough, chicken pox, measles, German measles (rubella), and mumps.  Those childhood diseases will be back in a big way because even if those vaccines remain available, herd immunity which relies on mandates and is key to preventing disease outbreaks will become a thing of the past.  If you think this is an exaggeration, consider Samoa which suffered a deadly measles outbreak not long after RFK’s 2019 visit when he convinced local government officials that the MMR (measles, mumps rubella) vaccine was dangerous. The result of that ill-advised warning was that 83 unvaccinated children died needlessly following a major measles outbreak.  RFK’s response to that was to blame their deaths on inadequate nutrition because admitting he’d had a hand in killing kids, that wasn’t going to happen.  The population of Samoa is 200,000, the population of the US is 330 million. The consequences of eliminating or even just reducing vaccine uptake in the US will be dire.  We’re not talking about running over and stashing a bear cub in Central Park, we’re talking about the lives of children and a whole lot of immune suppressed people of all ages.     

Hearings?:   The question is whether under the leadership of new Republican leader John Thune the Republican dominated Senate will hold the confirmation hearings that Trump insists they shouldn’t hold because he wants to put his “misfits” in place through recess appointments.  As of now Thune is mostly saying there will be hearings.  If so, the question will be whether enough Republicans take their “advice and consent” role seriously.  If they do, they’ll drill into RFK’s lack of credentials and his conspiracy nonsense and reject him.  If not, they’ll rubberstamp Trump’s appointment and we’ll suffer the consequences, not just those who voted for him but all of us and it’s not just vaccines, RFK is poised to do damage throughout all of HHS’s divisions, including the FDA and the CDC.  It’s not just RFK, others like Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Hegseth are woefully inadequate and in the case of Gabbard a risk to national security.  Again, if the hearings take place and Republican Senators do their job their failings will become obvious.  The question is how many, if any of Trump’s 🤡 🤡 they’ll be willing to ding because crossing Trump, which will incur not just his wrath but all kinds of attacks and threats from his MAGA acolytes, takes balls.  As of yesterday, the consensus is that Gaetz, especially once the results of the House ethics investigation into his alleged sex trafficking and drug use come to light, won’t be confirmed but we’ve been fooled before.  As to Fox’s Hegseth, in addition to being a misogynist and, judging by his tattoos and some of his appearances, an anti-Semitic white supremacist, he’s likely just not up for the task because it’s one thing to go on Fox and pander to Trump, it’s quite another to serve as the head of the huge DOD.  Then there’s Gabbard, in addition to all the suggestions that she’s a wee bit too friendly with Vladimir Putin, she’s previously shown an affinity for Syria’s Assad and she’s a member of an “abusive” religious cult. Additionally, there’s concern in the intelligence community that our allies will stop sharing key intelligence with us if she’s at the top of information loop, not that many of them are comfortable with Trump.  As to Trump’s other nominees, most of them are scary too, but predictably scary in that they are all in on pushing the Republican agenda.  That’s depressing, but par for the course because that what happens when the party in charge changes.  Last night Trump announced that he’s nominating North Dakota Governor/failed presidential candidate Doug Burgum to serve as the Secretary of the Interior.  Burgum, a captive of the oil industry, is all in on fulfilling Trump’s “drill baby drill” promise, environmental concerns be damned.  On the legal front, Trump has nominated many of the members of his legal defense team to senior positions, including Todd Blanche who he’s tapped to serve as Deputy Attorney General. Like him or not, unlike Matt Gaetz, Blanche has real credentials.  He previously worked as a prosecutor at the Southern District of New York and worked for the WilmerHale law firm before becoming a partner at Cadwalader. He stepped down from Cadwalader to defend Trump.  Trump also nominated former Georgia Congressman/veteran Doug Collins, one of those who defended him at the time of the Mueller hearings, to run the VA.  Collins had hoped to be appointed to the Senate seat vacated by Georgia’s former Senator Johnny Isakson but lost out to Kelly Loeffler who then lost an election to current Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. He was expected to challenge Georgia’s current Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in 2026 but assuming he’s confirmed as VA Secretary and he probably will be, that’s likely off the table.  On the Elon front, the co-president, who’s been having side conversations with Iran, is hiring for his DOGE team, criteria include a genius level IQ and a willingness to work endlessly for no pay because that’s what brilliant people do? Has anyone seen or heard from JD Vance?

State of Play: According to NBC Republicans have won 218 House seats, Democrats 209 with the rest of the races still not called.  The exact numbers vary depending on the source since some races have been called by some news outlets but not by others.  Three of those Republican seats will remain empty for a while since those winners are Trump appointees; one of them is Matt Gaetz who has already resigned from Congress.  Though the gap between Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey and likely winner Republican challenger Dave McCormick has shrunk to 24,000+/-, votes with only 49,000 ballots still uncounted it’s likely that Casey is toast.  Still that race will go to a recount.

#BringThemAllHomeNow