Synchronized Swimming and Crabcakes 🤯😱🌻✡️😱🤯

The State of the Shutdown:  Late yesterday eight members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus joined all Republicans except usual holdout Rand Paul in providing the sixty votes needed to pass a procedural vote, the first step in ending the government shutdown.  The eight include Maine’s Angus King, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez-Masto, the three who had previously voted against the shutdown, plus five additional Democrats including New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, Virginia’s Tim Kaine,  Illinois’ Dick Durbin, and Nevada’s Jackie Rosen. The Senate’s funding resolution which will keep the government funded through January 30 has a few new sweeteners, including a reversal of the mass firing of government employees that took place during the shutdown and a provision barring future layoffs through January 30 but does not include Obamacare subsidies, the issue that triggered the shutdown. Republican leader John Thune has promised to hold a separate vote on the subsidies, but it’s highly unlikely that it will pass both Houses, so the sharp increase in the cost of insurance as well as the increase in the number of people going without will remain an issue through the midterms which despite progressive squawking will probably benefit Democrats in the long run. Democrats, even those who voted for the Senate’s version of the funding resolution, aren’t happy with it; they signed on after concluding that there was not a thing they could do to get Republicans, most notably the callous and tone-deaf Trump to agree to anything better.  The increasing chaos at the airports in the run up to Thanksgiving, the concerns of unpaid constituents, and the SNAP mess contributed to their decision.  The Senate resolution now needs to make it pass the House.  Don’t expect instant relief because that could take some time since ersatz Speaker Mike Johnson sent his caucus home again last week to avoid a vote on the Epstein files discharge petition and the swearing in of Democrat Congressman-elect Grijalva besides even members of Congress, or at least those not flying private, are impacted by flight cancellations.

Snip SNAP 🤯: Trump gives new meaning to both the “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” and “Let Them Eat Cake” adages.  While food pantry lines got longer, he spent part of his weekend golfing and at another Mar a Lago event, this one featuring synchronized swimmers alongside shellfish filled banquet tables all while a film of how he really won the 2020 election ran as a backdrop. He spent the rest of his weekend flying to and then attending a Washington Commanders football game, part of his campaign to intimidate the team’s owners into naming its new stadium after him. While he was dining, flying, and being booed by less than adoring football fans, SNAP food stamp payments remained in limbo. It’s hard to accurately describe the SNAP trajectory, it went something like this: Trump declared no SNAP payments during the shutdown despite the availability of contingency reserves; then two federal district judges said that the administration had to make the payments; then the Trump administration began to make partial payments; then the district courts said make the full payments; then Trump said no payments will be made; then the Department of Agriculture indicated to the states that they should initiate full payments which several states started to do; then in an effort to legalize halting all payments the DOJ skipped over the Appeals court and went directly to the Supreme Court which issued a stay halting payments while the case was first reviewed by the Appeals Court; then the Trump administration started threatening the states ordering them to claw back the payments already made with the permission of the Department of Agriculture.  Last night the Appeals Court said that the payment should be made but their decision remains stayed for another 48 hours pending a full Supreme Court review. Confused?  Imagine being one of the 42 million Americans reliant on food stamps.  Fairway, my local supermarket, is “selling” food baskets to be sent to local food pantries; it might be worth checking with yours because if ever there was a time to do a mitzvah it’s now.          

Health Planning: Trump didn’t just cause SNAP chaos this weekend he also made it clear that it’s not just the Obamacare subsidies that he wants on the chopping block, he’s after the whole program. To that end, in addition to reposting obviously false claims that former President Obama receives royalties from Obamacare renewals, on Sunday Trump posted that he was “recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by Obamacare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over. In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, Obamacare!”  He then posted that his plan would involve sending all of us $2000 from the money “earned” from his possibly illegal tariffs to be used for health care.  Putting aside that the tariff revenues are taxes that we are already paying and that no one likes their insurance companies, his health care plan is nonsensical pie in the sky bull 💩, a return to the time when people who didn’t get their insurance through their employees and couldn’t afford insurance were left high and dry.  And that $2000, how far will it go when someone needs chemo or even just maternity care? Trump is delusional, callous, and evil, and his Project 2025 abettors, who don’t believe in food subsidy programs like SNAP, most certainly don’t believe that everyone is entitled to affordable health coverage. As to affordability for anything, Trump’s plan to bring down prices, or at the very least curb inflation, continues to involve a combination of smoke and mirrors and jazz hands.  He’s mostly just bragging about lowering costs and inflation, hoping that enough of us, or at the very least, enough of his base believe him despite reality and why not, a lot of people still think he’ll be releasing his “health plane” in two weeks, when he releases his tax filings.  

More 💩: Trump is still pardoning people willy nilly.  Not just fraudsters and donors, now he’s granting pardons to anyone who helped him challenge the results of the 2020 election, the one he lost but that he continues to insist that he won. Last night his pardon attorney revealed that Trump had pardoned a long list of his political allies for their support or involvement in alleged plans to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  The list includes Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, among dozens of others including the false ballot crew. In other crappy news, as our military prepares for a new war or two, Secretary of War and Beer Pete Hegseth continues to fire and impede the promotion of lots of competent experienced officers maybe because he doesn’t want anyone around to stand in the way of Trump’s next war and his election interference plans? And because despite all the 💩, there are decent people on both sides of the aisle, warning of an “existential threat to democracy” Federal District Court Judge Mark Wolf who was appointed by Reagan, announced in a “searing first-person essay”  published in The Atlantic that he had stepped down from the bench to speak out against Trump who he accused of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.”