Dispatches December 2025

 TRUMP-GOP STONEWALLING SHOWS THEY’RE ‘ABSOLUTELY COMMITTED TO RAISING YOUR COSTS,’ SEN. MURPHY SAYS. US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the GOP’s rejection of Democrats’ compromise proposal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for a year in exchange for reopening the federal government shows the Republican Party is “absolutely committed to raising your costs.”

“Republicans are refusing to negotiate,” Murphy said in a video posted to social media Nov. 8, arguing that President Donald Trump and the GOP’s continued stonewalling is “further confirmation” that Republicans are uninterested in preventing disastrous premium increases, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (11/8).

“They are willing to keep the government shut down, they are so determined to make you pay more for healthcare,” the senator added.

More than 20 million Americans who purchase health insurance on the ACA marketplace receive enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t act. So far, the Republican leadership in the Senate has only offered to hold a vote on the ACA subsidies, with no guarantee of the outcome, in exchange for Democratic votes to reopen the government.

People across the country are already seeing their premiums surge, and if the subsidies are allowed to lapse, costs are expected to rise further and millions will likely go uninsured.

“Clearly, the GOP didn’t learn their lesson after the shellacking they got in Tuesday’s elections,” said Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse. “They would rather keep the government shut down, depriving Americans of their paychecks and food assistance, than let working families keep the healthcare tax credits they need to afford lifesaving coverage. Good luck explaining that to the American people.”

In a post to his social media platform on Saturday, Trump made clear that he remains opposed to extending the ACA tax credits, calling on Republicans to instead send money that would have been used for the subsidies “directly to the people so that they can purchase their own, much better healthcare.”

Trump provided no details on how such a plan would work. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who was at the center of the largest healthcare fraud case in US history, declared that he is “writing the bill now,” suggesting that the funds would go to “HSA-style accounts.”

Democrats immediately panned the idea.

“This is, unsurprisingly, nonsensical,” said Murphy. “Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead? And then when they get a cancer diagnosis they just go bankrupt? He is so unserious. That’s why we are shut down and Americans know it.”

Polling data released Thursday by the health policy group KFF showed that nearly three-quarters of the US public wants Congress to extend the ACA subsidies

“More than half (55%) of those who purchase their own health insurance say Democrats should refuse to approve a budget that does not include an extension for ACA subsidies,” KFF found. “Notably, past KFF polls have shown that nearly half of adults enrolled in ACA marketplace plans identify as Republican or lean Republican.”

TRUMP HEALTHCARE PAYMENT PROPOSAL SPARKS FRESH MEDICARE FOR ALL DEMANDS TO FIX ‘BROKEN’ HEALTHCARE SYSTEM. As the government appears poised to reopen, with Republicans having successfully avoided concessions on their goal of eliminating Affordable Care Act tax credits, President Donald Trump has proposed his own solution to the looming explosion in health insurance costs, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (11/10).

By agreeing to reopen the government without a deal, Democrats have given up their main leverage to force Republicans to extend the credits set to expire at the end of the year. If this happens, over 22 million Americans are expected to see their monthly insurance premiums more than double. As enrollment data for next year shows, Americans are already seeing skyrocketing healthcare costs, not just for ACA recipients but for everyone.

While Republicans successfully strong-armed their opposition into caving by using the shutdown to turn the screws on government workers and food stamp recipients, they still have to weather the political fallout of the coming healthcare apocalypse. A poll released Nov. 6 by KFF found that 74% of Americans—half of whom are self-identified Republicans—want to see the credits extended. Three-quarters also say they’d blame either Trump or Republicans in Congress if they weren’t.

On Truth Social Nov. 8, as a shutdown deal appeared likely, Trump proposed his own idea:

“I am 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.”

Trump is correct that under the current scheme, Americans don’t actually receive money directly. But experts warn that while there’s a visceral populist logic to his proposal, the flaws of replacing those annual subsidies with a one-time payment become obvious with the barest of scrutiny, especially when it is paired with a proposal to fully repeal the ACA.

“You have to read between the lines here to imagine what President Trump is proposing,” said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “It sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do.”

One of the Senate’s most prominent proponents of eliminating the ACA and other parts of the social safety net, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), said he was “writing the bill right now,” and clarified that it would indeed involve “HSA-style accounts” for Americans in place of subsidized insurance.

On Nov. 9, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) noted that this was just a reheating of the “same old, tired proposal of repealing the Affordable Care Act, giving people a benefit in the form of a health savings account, but allowing insurance companies once again to cancel policies and refuse to write policies for people who have preexisting health conditions.”

HSAs were a key component of the Republicans’ failed 2017 plan to “repeal and replace” the ACA, which many critics pointed out would allow insurers to skyrocket the costs of insurance for those dealing with preexisting conditions.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sits on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), called Trump’s new plan “unsurprisingly nonsensical.”

“Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead?” Murphy asked. “And then when they get a cancer diagnosis, they just go bankrupt?”

But while many Democrats decried yet another effort to dismantle the ACA, some progressives pointed out that health insurance costs, and healthcare costs more generally, have still exploded under Obamacare, which — despite introducing new guardrails — still leaves profit-driven insurance intact and requires all Americans to purchase it.

“Yes, Mr. President: You’re right. We do have ‘the worst healthcare’ of any major country,” replied Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the HELP committee’s ranking member, who has long decried the profiteering of insurance companies. “Despite spending twice as much per capita, we are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all as a human right. The solution: Medicare for All.”

WORST MASTERMINDS OF TRUMP’S ATTEMPTED COUP GET PARDONS. President Trump preemptively pardoned more than 75 people who helped him try to steal the 2020 election, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (11/10). This included disgraced ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and disbarred right-wing lawyer John Eastman—the one who came up with the legal strategy to help Trump overturn the election results.

The 77 pardons — announced by Trump’s moronic and corrupt pardon attorney Ed Martin — were symbolic, as none of the people are facing federal charges for their disgraceful attempt to serve as so-called “alternate electors” to the Electoral College so Trump could steal then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

However, it’s indicative of Trump’s belief that people who support him are above the law—essentially granting them carte blanche to commit crimes as they won’t face punishment for doing so.

Martin announced the pardons by listing then in a thread on X, where he had previously said, “no MAGA left behind.”

Aside from Giuliani and Eastman, the pardons also include:

• Sidney Powell, the lunatic former member of Trump’s legal team who stood alongside Giuliani in an insane news conference after Trump’s 2020 loss in which she claimed a dead Venezuelan dictator conspired with voting machine companies to steal the election from Trump. Her deranged rantings got her sued for millions from the voting machine companies she defamed. 

• Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff who helped coordinate the effort to steal the election.

• And Boris Epshteyn, a Trump ally who currently serves as a special adviser to Trump who aided Giuliani in the fake elector scheme.

The pardons are the latest in Trump’s efforts to reward law-breaking and corrupt Republicans.

On Nov. 7, Trump pardoned former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, who was serving 36 months in federal prison on fraud charges. Trump also commuted the sentence of expelled New York GOP Rep. George Santos, releasing the fraudster from prison years before his sentence was set to expire. And he pardoned billionaire crypto Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who does business with Trump’s sons.

Those are on top of the pardons of hundreds of insurrectionists who either pleaded guilty to, were convicted of, or were set to face trial for their role in the riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A number of those criminals have committed more crimes since Trump’s act of clemency.

An even more horrendous pardon could also be on the way. Congressional Democrats say that convicted felon Ghislaine Maxwell is seeking a commutation of her 20-year prison sentence for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sick child sex trafficking operation.

House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) released documents of Maxwell’s commutation application, and warned Trump against granting her clemency, NBC News reported on Monday.

“You should not grant any form of clemency to this convicted and unrepentant sex offender,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Trump, ABC News reported. “Your Administration should not be providing her with room service, with puppies to play with, with federal law enforcement officials waiting on her every need, or with any special treatment or institutional privilege at all.”

HEGSETH SAYS 6 MORE MEN KILLED IN LATEST BOAT BOMBINGS. Six people were killed Nov. 9 in US military strikes on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed were boats smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the total death toll from all such reported attacks to at least 76 since early September, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (11/10).

“Yesterday, at the direction of President [Donald] Trump, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations. These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the eastern Pacific,” Hegseth said Nov. 10 on social media without providing evidence to support his claim.

“Both strikes were conducted in international waters and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed,” he added. “No US forces were harmed. Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people.”

The Nov. 9 attacks raised the death toll in the Trump administration’s nine-week campaign to at least 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The US strikes have come amid Trump’s deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela and follow the president’s approval of covert CIA action and threats to attack inside the oil-rich country.

The previous week, Republicans in the US Senate rejected a bipartisan war powers resolution aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing its bombing of alleged drug boats or attacking Venezuela without lawmakers’ assent, as required by law.

Trump administration officials have admitted that they aren’t attempting to identify people aboard boats before or after bombing them. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) recently told CNN that Pentagon officials briefed her “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes.”

Jacobs also said that the administration is not making any effort to imprison survivors of the strikes or prosecute them, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”

In the past, drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific has been treated by the US government as a law enforcement issue, with the Coast Guard and other agencies sometimes intercepting boats and arresting those on board if evidence was found, granting them a day in court.

Leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and other nations; United Nations officials; human rights groups; and Democratic US lawmakers are among those who have condemned the boat bombings as extrajudicial assassination, murder, and war crimes.

STARVING THE POOR IS TOO MUCH FUN FOR TRUMP TO GIVE UP. President Trump really doesn’t want poor people to eat, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (11/10).

An appeals court on Nov. 10 ruled that even though the government is shut down, Trump and his administration have to pay out Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits—better known as food stamps—to the over 40 million Americans who rely on the program to feed themselves and their families.

But Trump immediately notified the Supreme Court that it would be filing an appeal, hoping to stop benefits from going out to hungry people until the government reopens, which is expected to happen soon.

That comes after the Trump administration told states over the weekend that they had to reverse any attempts to fund SNAP benefits or else risk adverse consequences.

“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized. Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025,” Patrick A. Penn, a deputy undersecretary of the Agriculture Department, wrote in a memo to states. “Failure to comply with this memorandum may result in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administrative costs and holding States liable for any overissuances that result from the noncompliance.”

Obstinately refusing to pay out food stamps is so evil it’s hard to put into words.

“Trump is doing this because he is a bad person,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said at a press conference last week when Trump was fighting court orders to pay SNAP benefits. “He’s weaponizing hunger and trying to rip food away from more than 40 million Americans, including 16 million children, for sadistic political leverage. How dare he?” 

It’s also politically idiotic.

The courts had given Trump a good out when they ordered him to pay food stamp benefits.

Trump appealing those rulings because he didn’t want to pay SNAP benefits makes him directly responsible for millions of people going hungry—including millions of Trump’s own voters who rely on food stamps.

And it seems the public agrees. Trump’s approval rating has declined dramatically since he began to hold poor people hostage by refusing to fund food stamps until the government reopened.

“It seems very likely that threatening SNAP benefits was the primary cause of the big downshift in Trump’s approval ratings beginning ~3 weeks ago,” polling analyst Nate Silver wrote, referring to the date when Trump’s secretary of agriculture announced the administration would not be funding food stamp benefits during the shutdown.

Trump’s approval rating now stands at a dismal 40.2%, according to FiftyPlusOne’s polling average.

That’s about a 2-percentage-point decline since early October, and such high disapproval of Trump’s agenda could cause an electoral wipeout for Republicans next November—as it did last week in a spate of off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and California.

“The Oligarchs Never Change,” progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in a post on X. “Marie-Antoinette: Let Them Eat Cake. Donald Trump: Let Them Starve.”

TRUMP DOJ GIVES GOOGLE ANTITRUST WIN AFTER TECH GIANT’S BALLROOM DONATION. The US Justice Department has reportedly given the tech behemoth Alphabet a green light to acquire the cybersecurity firm Wiz after it was revealed that the Google parent company donated to President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom project, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (11/6)

The merger deal is valued at over $30 billion and would mark Alphabet’s largest acquisition to date, even as the company faces antitrust cases at the state and federal level. Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport announced the Justice Department’s decision on Nov. 6 at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

The DOJ approval came after Bloomberg reported in June that the Justice Department’s antitrust arm was reviewing whether Alphabet’s acquisition of Wiz would illegally undermine competition. The following month, the Justice Department ousted two of its top antitrust officials amid internal conflict over shady corporate settlement deals.

Lee Hepner, an antitrust attorney and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, called the DOJ’s clearing of Alphabet’s Wiz acquisition “the kind of blunt corruption that most won’t notice.”

Hepner observed that news of the approval came shortly after the White House released a list of individuals and corporations that have pumped money into Trump’s gaudy ballroom project. Google—which also donated to Trump’s inauguration—was one of the prominent names on the list, alongside Amazon, Apple and other major corporations.

Google is reportedly funneling $22 million to the ballroom project.

“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom debacle out of a sense of civic pride,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said earlier in the week. “They have massive interests before the federal government and they undoubtedly hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration.”

“Millions to fund Trump’s architectural whims are nothing compared to the billions at stake in procurement, regulatory, and enforcement decisions,” he added.

According to a Public Citizen report published Nov. 2, two-thirds of the 24 known corporate donors to Trump’s ballroom project—including Google—are beneficiaries of recent government contracts.

‘MEGA-LAYOFFS’ UNDER TRUMP AS CORPORATIONS HAVE CUT 1 MILLION JOBS THIS YEAR—MOST SINCE 2003. The US labor market, which in recent months had ground nearly to a halt, now appears to be entering a downward spiral, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (11/6).

As reported by the Washington Post on Thursday, new data from corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that employers in October announced 153,000 job cuts, which marked the highest number of layoffs in that month since October 2003.

Total announced job cuts in 2025 have now reached 1.1 million, a number that the Post describes as a “recession-like” level comparable to the steep job cuts announced in the wake of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

John Challenger, the CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told the Post that the huge number of October layoffs showed the economy was entering “new territory.”

“We haven’t seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now—48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon—since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009,” he explained. “When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction.”

CNBC noted that the Challenger report found that the tech sector is currently being hardest hit by the layoffs, and it said that the adoption of artificial intelligence was a significant driver of job cuts.

“Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes,” the report said. “Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market.”

With the backing of Big Tech investors, President Donald Trump has pushed to prevent states from regulating AI, over the objections of labor groups and progressive lawmakers. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned that without strong regulation, tech billionaires’ investments in AI will likely “increase their wealth and power exponentially” while wiping out “tens of millions” of jobs.

According to Bloomberg, however, AI adoption is just one factor in companies’ decision to enact mass layoffs, as some firms have also cited the need to protect their profit margins from the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have raised prices for a wide variety of products and materials.

Democratic lawmakers were quick to seize on the news of mass layoffs as evidence that Trump is sending the US economy into a ditch.

“Trump put billionaires in charge of everything,” remarked Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in a social media post. “It’s a disaster.”

“Trump inherited the fastest growing economy in the [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], fastest reduction in inflation, record job creation,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). “Dumb tariffs, racist immigration policies, attacks on the rule of law and termination of congressionally mandated programs did this.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), meanwhile, simply wrote that “Trump’s economy suuuuucks.”

Rage Against Trump's Bitches

After the shellacking voters gave Republicans in the Nov. 4 general election, it was a surprise when Senate Democrats on Nov. 9 offered to join the GOP in opening up the federal government before Congress takes up renewal of health insurance subsidies for working-class families under the Affordable Care Act. 

Democrats had their spirits up when they swept statewide offices in Virginia and New Jersey by much wider margins than were expected, as well as winning three state Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania, and a gerrymandering referendum in California that would offset Republican gerrymandering gains Donald Trump had ordered in Texas in his desperate hope to maintain control of the House of Representatives.

Republicans focused on the victory of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City whom Trump and the GOP mischaracterized as a communist because he believes in free bus rides, universal childcare, controlling apartment rents, increasing the minimum wage and opening city-operated grocery stores in neighborhoods where there is a lack of commercial grocery stores. 

Speaking in Washington, D.C., the morning after the election, House Speaker Mike Johnson played down the Democratic wins as predictable, given the recent voting histories of New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

“There’s no surprises,” Johnson said. “What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night’s election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come, that’s what history teaches us.”

But, despite Johnson’s claims, Democrats on Nov. 4 won by wider margins in the blue states and also won major victories in two southern states that supported Trump in the 2024 general election, and those cases have given the GOP pause.

Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson ousted incumbent Republicans serving on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, which is responsible for regulating utility prices in the state.

This is the first time any Democrat has served on the Georgia commission since 2007, and it came after the commission approved six rate increases for the state’s largest electricity provider over the past two years.

Georgia Republicans are worried that the Public Service Commission  results could spell trouble for GOP hopes to oust Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) in 2026.

In Mississippi, Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the state Senate for the first time in over a decade by flipping two seats. According to Mississippi Free Press, losing the Senate supermajority will make it significantly harder for Mississippi Republicans to “override a governor’s veto, propose constitutional amendments, and execute certain procedural actions.”

Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Cheikh Taylor warned the Democratic gains could be undone if the US Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has been used to create majority-minority districts to ensure Black voters in southern states have proper representation.

Democrats can celebrate their success in establishing that Republicans are responsible for eliminating subsidies for health insurance, and the leaders of the Greedy Oligarch Party were willing to let children go hungry by suspending the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and they let federal workers face the risk of eviction after going two months without a paycheck, even though some were still required to show up for work. 

At this point, Democratic senators have done all they could  to nudge Republican senators to support the Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies, which will double or triple many workers’ premiums. With 47 Senate votes, including two independents, Democrats can’t pass anything in the Senate, but they could stop the funding bill, since at least seven Democratic votes were needed to beat the filibuster, which requires 60 votes. (Republicans actually needed eight Democrats because Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., opposed it.) 

Senate Republicans agreed to hold a vote in December on restoring those Obamacare insurance subsidies for 22 million Americans who face huge premium hikes in January. Those Obamacare beneficiaries, who live disproportionately in red states, saw on Nov. 1 how much their premiums will rise, when the new ACA marketplace went online, and they need to let their senators and congressmembers know Republicans can forget about getting their vote again if they don’t restore the ACA subsidies.

If Republicans in either chamber refuse to extend the ACA subsidies, Democrats should own the health insurance affordability issue and hammer that issue every day until the 2026 midterm elections, pushing to expand Medicare to cover everybody, because health care should be a human right in the United States.

In your exchanges with Republican obstructionists, feel free to bring up to those who claim to be Christians the red-letter words reported in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 25, 31-46. In the “Judgment of the Nations,” also known as “The Parable of the Sheep and Goats,” Jesus told his disciples the nations will be judged based upon how they treated the “least of these,” the poor, the hungry, the sick, prisoners and strangers among them. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” Jesus said, and the righteous will go to their heavenly reward while those who denied the “least of these” will be sent into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

(For more instances of the misuse of the teachings of Jesus Christ to promote hate instead of compassion, see “Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds,” by comedian and Biblical scholar John Fugelsang, published by Simon & Schuster.)

While Jesus did not mention Trump by name, there is no doubt where the Lyin’ King is headed, along with his bitches in Congress who refuse to make health care affordable.

Meanwhile, Mike Johnson, the laziest House Speaker in U.S. history, kept the House in recess for a record 40 days before the general election, which allowed him to avoid swearing in Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) who was elected in a special election Sept. 23 to the seat that has been open since March 13, when her father, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who served 22 years in the House, died at age 77 after a long battle with cancer. Ms. Grijalva would provide the deciding 218th signature on releasing Justice Department files on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case.

In conclusion; Feed the hungry, heal the sick and house the homeless or Go to Hell. And release the Epstein files.      — JMC

From the December issue of The Progressive Populist.

The Magic Christian

The Magic Christian:

House Speaker Mike Johnson's Christian faith is apparently one of convenience. On its face, Trump's alleged pedophilia and felonious activity would be at odds with Mike's professed religiosity. 

It is not. Mike is a fierce defender of Trump. The reason is simple.The Church of Holy Hypocrisy grants its members a great deal of latitude.

Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

 

Another Trump Thug

 

Another Trump Thug:

Tom Homan -Trump's appointed border czar and true believer - is a thug. His treatment of immigrants and threats leveled at anyone standing against him are egregious. His belief and promotion of conspiracy theories have earned him a place in Trump's inner circle.

And now he's been caught taking bribes. Apparently, he's been at it for some time. Fortunately for him, all his buddies in the FBI and DOJ have been busy covering up his mess.

Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

Cliffhanger

 

The Long Fall:

At the root of all Trump’s efforts to undermine the Constitution and destroy the country is Vladimir Putin. Putin would like very much to wrap up the war in Ukraine and take back all the old Soviet Union’s satellite countries -- Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia et-al. During his first term, Trump let it be known that he’d let him do it. Trouble is, Putin can’t seem to get the job done. Russia’s not the country it once was and Putin’s running out of time. Sure would make things easier if the USA were out of the picture.

Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

Dispatches

MEDICAL EXPERTS HORRIFIED BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ‘FRIDAY NIGHT MASSACRE’ AT CDC, BUT SOME ARE CALLED BACK. The Trump administration carried out mass layoffs of federal public health officials Oct. 10 that experts warned would leave the US dangerously unprepared to handle disease outbreaks.

As reported by The New York Times Oct. 11, the layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were deep and wide-ranging, and included employees and leaders “in offices addressing respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention, and global health.”

The administration laid off the entire CDC office in Washington, D.C., as well as the staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication founded in 1930 that has been credited with the first reporting in medical literature on the disease that would come to be known as AIDS in 1981.

In addition to this, several dozen Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, commonly known as “disease detectives” who track outbreaks across the world, received their termination notices, Bred Reed noted at Common Dreams (10/11).

Dr. Jeremy Foust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, reported in a post on his personal Substack newsletter that CDC insiders are estimating that “between 1,100 and 1,300 employees are being cut” by the Trump administration.

Other public health experts reacted with horror to news of the terminations.

Dr. Catharine Young, a senior fellow at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, described the layoffs as a “Friday night massacre” and warned of severe repercussions for both US citizens and the entire world.

“This isn’t streamlining the government—it’s dismantling our ability to detect and respond to outbreaks before they spread,” she wrote in a post on X. “You can’t cut your way to safety.”

However, the Trump administration on the next day reversed about half of the layoffs at the CDC after hundreds of scientists received “incorrect notifications” that they were laid off during the government shutdown, NBC News reported Oct. 12, citing an official familiar with the matter.

“The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” the official told NBC News. “This was due to a glitch in the system.”

The reversed layoffs came just after the administration moved to lay off thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown, prompting backlash from critics who argue the layoffs are illegal.

The reduction-in-force moves are being challenged in court and mark the latest fallout from the government shutdown fight, which has stretched into its second week as lawmakers show no signs of moving closer to a deal.

TRUMP HAS HIRED 100+ ‘FOSSIL FUEL INSIDERS’ TO FILL TOP ENERGY, ENVIRONMENTAL ROLES. A top energy adviser to President Donald Trump admitted in an August interview that the administration is offering “concierge, white-glove service” to fossil fuel companies while blocking and defunding clean energy projects, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (10/8).

The comments, reported Oct. 7 by the Washington Post, came from Brittany Kelm, a senior policy adviser for Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), which was established within the Department of the Interior in February.

“We’re like this little tiger team, concierge, white-glove service, essentially,” Kelm said on the Lobby Shop podcast, “We were put together very particularly with the president’s priorities in mind on energy. So keeping coal plants open, establishing critical mineral mining domestically, and then that broader supply chain.”

She described her role in the council as being to help oil, gas, and coal companies navigate “the politicals” of agencies that grant permits for new projects. Companies, she said, “can walk out of our office, and they have all the contacts they need” for regulators in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the departments of the Interior and Commerce.

“We know how to unstick what is stuck,” Kelm said. “It’s a lot of undoing old policies and getting rid of regulatory burdens.”

Mahyar Sorour, the director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Fossil Fuels policy project, responded: “The reality of fossil fuel companies getting white-glove, concierge service from the Trump administration would be comical if it weren’t so sinister.”

“During the election,” she continued, “Trump told oil and gas executives that he would clear the way for more production without any safeguards if they gave his campaign a billion dollars—they did, and now Trump is blocking clean energy and giving the oil and gas industry immense handouts in return.”

Since retaking office in January, Trump has sought to expand the production of oil, gas, and coal with reckless abandon, without regard to the impacts of carbon emissions on the planet or other environmental impacts of pollution.

As the rest of the world has surged its use of wind and solar projects, surpassing coal for the first time this year, the Department of Energy made a $625 million investment to “expand and reinvigorate the coal industry,” which is the dirtiest form of energy.

And July’s massive GOP budget contained billions of dollars worth of handouts for the fossil fuel industry, boosted drilling on millions of acres of public lands, mandated oil and gas lease sales, and imposed new fees on renewable development.

At the same time, Trump has singlehandedly reduced the US’s growth outlook for renewables by 45%, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

As the Post reports:

[Trump’s] administration has held up permits for solar and wind projects since July and blocked wind farms outright. The Energy Department last week canceled $7.6 billion in funding for projects aimed at curbing climate change including installation of renewables, grid upgrades and carbon capture projects. That’s on top of $27 billion in funding for clean energy that the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to claw back.

COAL MINERS NEVER THOUGHT TRUMP WOULD MAKE BLACK LUNG GREAT AGAIN. Coal miners, who largely work in states that President Donald Trump won by large margins in the 2024 election, are criticizing his administration for failing to enforce federal rules that would limit the spread of potentially fatal black lung disease, Oliver Willis noted at Common Dreams  (10/13).

“The coal miners have supplied this country with electricity, and now they’re just cast aside to die,” West Virginia-based Judith Riffe, whose husband died of the ailment, told The New York Times.

A federal rule limiting miner exposure to silica dust—which causes black lung disease—was set to go into effect in April, but it has been opposed in court by the mining industry, which alleges that it’s too expensive to limit the use of the material, despite the health risk.

The Trump administration has decided not to enforce the rule until the court case is resolved, demonstrating its support for the mining industry. But then in September, the administration said that it would put at least $625 million into subsidizing the coal industry—ignoring all environmental impacts.

“The companies might be getting a handout, but the miners ain’t getting none,” Gary Hairston, a retired West Virginia coal miner who has suffered from black lung disease for more than 30 years and is president of the National Black Lung Association, told the Times. 

In 2024, Trump won West Virginia by more than 41 percentage points, with 69.97% of the vote. That made it Trump’s second-best performance behind Wyoming, where he received 71.6% of the vote.

The rule to protect miners was proposed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and was the first time in U.S. history that silica dust was regulated. 

“We’re making it clear that no job should be a death sentence, and every worker has the right to come home healthy and safe at the end of the day,” Julie Su, who was the acting director for the Department of Labor at the time, said. 

Congressional Republicans have voiced their support for holding back the rule. In a July letter to the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration at the Labor Department, House Education and Workforce Committee Republicans complained that the rule is “unwarranted and costly.”

But despite the position of the industry and the Trump administration, mine workers are developing black lung disease at an earlier age. Data shows that the current rate of the disease is back to rates last seen more than 50 years ago, in the 1970s.

Black lung disease is an incurable condition and can lead to deadly outcomes like lung cancer, tuberculosis, and heart failure.

GOP GERRYMANDERING MAY BACKFIRE SPECTACULARLY. It appears Republicans are getting too big for their britches in the Donald Trump-led effort to rig the 2026 midterm elections by redrawing congressional districts to benefit the GOP—hubris that may backfire a bit, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (10/9).

On Oct. 6, Utah’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map that actually opens the party up to losing two seats in the state’s four-member U.S. House delegation.

Utah passed the new map under orders from a state judge, who ruled in August that the current Republican congressional gerrymander violated a law that required the state to use a nonpartisan commission when drawing districts.

But rather than make one of the state’s four seats blue by centering it around Democratic-heavy Salt Lake City, as proposed by an independent redistricting commission, Republicans instead redrew the map to split Salt Lake City into two districts, a move that ensures that President Donald Trump carried all four of the state’s new House seats—albeit by smaller margins than the illegal map the judge struck down.

Yet, if a Democratic wave materializes in 2026 amid backlash to Trump and his party’s fealty to his lawlessness, Republicans might actually lose two seats, rather than just one.

“The map has two seats that Trump carried by about 2 and 7 points, respectively. Such a plan might end up being a ‘dummymander’—a situation when the dominant party draws a map to favor it that backfires and produces gains for the opposition party,” Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst at the outlet Decision Desk HQ, wrote about a draft of Utah’s new map.

The new map will still need to be approved by a judge before it takes effect.

Meanwhile, things are looking good for Democrats in California, where voters are being asked in a November ballot measure whether the legislature should redraw the state’s congressional maps in response to GOP redistricting efforts in Texas.

Punchbowl News reported on Oct. 8 that Republicans appear to be throwing in the towel on California’s redistricting fight, believing that Democrats’ efforts to paint the referendum as a check on Trump’s power will lead the ballot measure to pass. Polls suggest the measure would pass if the election were held today.

If the ballot measure passes, California’s redrawn map would likely neutralize the gains Republicans are seeking to make in Texas.

What’s more, Republicans’ efforts to redraw Indiana’s congressional map appear to be stalling. GOP lawmakers are getting cold feet about trying to axe a Democratic seat, Politico’s Adam Wren reported—so much so that the White House is sending Vice President JD Vance to the state to strong-arm GOP legislators into submission.

Democrats, meanwhile, say that despite Republicans’ best efforts to gerrymander their way to victory, the GOP’s unpopular actions will still sink its House majority next November.

“[Trump] is trying everything possible to keep the House in 2026. All the redistricting in the world isn’t going to help when the Trump health insurance premiums hits,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote Oct. 7 in a post on X. “24 Million voters, many in swing districts, are gonna see their insurance costs increase. Good luck Don!”

RASKIN DEMANDS BACK RECORDS IN PROBE OF $1.5 BILLION IN ‘SUSPICIOUS’ TRANSACTIONS TIED TO EPSTEIN. US House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Oct. 8 sent letters to four major banks demanding records related to more than $1.5 billion in “suspicious” financial transactions tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, Jessica Corbett noted at Common Dreams (10/9).

“Can Bank of America help Congress understand how Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their co-conspirators were able to use your bank and others to conduct more than $1.5 billion in suspicious financial transactions to operate their international sex trafficking ring for years without ever being caught?” Raskin (D-Md.) wrote to the bank’s CEO, Brian Moynihan.

The congressman began his letters to Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robin Vince, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the same way.

Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while facing federal charges for sex trafficking. His death was ruled a suicide, but that has been met with deep skepticism. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal sentence for her related crimes.

The US Department of Justice has refused to release all of its files on Epstein, heightening public, media, and congressional attention on his friendship with President Donald Trump in the 1990s until their alleged falling out in the early 2000s.

“In September, at a hearing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel, it became clear that the FBI has failed to ‘follow the money’ with regard to more than $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring,” Raskin wrote Oct. 8.

“In light of this startling information, House Judiciary Committee Democrats moved to subpoena financial records related to Jeffrey Epstein from these four banks, but Republicans, with the exception of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky,), blocked these efforts,” he explained, urging the institutions to willingly work with the panel.

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, institutions must implement anti-money laundering policies, which include requiring compliance officers, often in consultation with executives, to file a suspicious activity report (SAR) within 60 days of noticing an activity that raises a red flag, “so federal authorities can be alerted to the potential criminal activity and investigate,” the letters stress.

“Despite the public nature of Mr. Epstein’s crimes, and the hundreds of millions of his funds flowing through your bank, it appears Bank of America filed only two significantly delayed SARs relating to his conduct—covering $170 million in transactions between Mr. Epstein and billionaire investor Leon Black,” Raskin wrote to Moynihan.

‘CROOKED COPS’ REPORT DETAILS TRUMP-LED CORRUPTION OF JUSTICE DEPT. The Not Above the Law Coalition on Thursday released a report documenting how President Donald Trump’s administration has been corrupting every aspect of federal law enforcement, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (10/9).

The report, titled Trump’s “Crooked Cops”: The Corruption of Federal Law Enforcement, said that the president has “gone to extreme lengths to appoint top officials with no compunction about abusing their power to pervert justice to punish political enemies and favor political friends,” before showing how these appointees have swiftly eliminated their agencies’ independence from White House political pressure.

“Law enforcement that serves the political interests of the president rather than the public eliminates a core tenet of democracy, namely that we are a country of laws, not of men,” the report emphasizes.

The report begins by recounting how Attorney General Pam Bondi followed direct orders from the president to file criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, while at the same time noting that she has overseen “a department-wide purge of career officials who were assigned to Trump’s criminal cases or who were suspected to be insufficiently loyal to Trump personally.”

Other Trump officials who feature prominently in the report include FBI Director Kash Patel, who is facing a lawsuit from former agents who have alleged they were fired as part of a “campaign of retribution”; Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who conducted an interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and then moved her “to more comfortable, low-security accommodations” after she told him that Trump had no involvement in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities; and White House border czar Tom Homan, who was allegedly caught on video accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents.

The report also takes a swipe at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured ABC to take late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air mere hours before the network decided to suspend him.

“This was by no means the first instance of Carr weaponizing his regulatory enforcement power for political ends,” the report says. “His threats have been all the more significant as many media companies have business interests pending before the administration.

During a conference call announcing the report, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) described the Trump administration’s actions as ”so distressing and so disturbing,“ and vowed that he was ”not going to stand by while the Department of Justice is used to subvert the rule of law.“

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a former federal prosecutor, said on the call that it was ”personally devastating“ to watch the corruption of the Justice Department, and he vowed that House Democrats would be ready to go with oversight investigations should they return to the majority after the 2026 midterm elections.

”Trump is trying to turn this government into his own personal fiefdom,“ said Goldman, who later described the weaponization of the Department of Homeland Security as ”downright scary.“

LIVING WAGE, AFFORDABILITY PLATFORMS HAVE MAJOR ELECTORAL ADVANTAGE, POLLS SHOW. As One Fair Wage launched a new political action committee focused on electing candidates who will push for a true living wage that makes it possible for working people across the US to thrive, the coalition said two new surveys provide a “roadmap for 2026” for candidates and Democratic leaders who are willing to follow it, Julia Conley noted at Common Dreams (10/9).

The polls were conducted by Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners on behalf of One Fair Wage (OFW) and the Living Wage for All Coalition, and found “overwhelming support for living wage policies in competitive swing districts and in major cities.”

In 18 competitive congressional districts across the country, the first survey found that 55% of respondents supported raising the minimum wage for all workers to $25 per hour, even after being exposed to opposition messaging.

Latino voters showed the strongest support at 72%, along with people of color overall at 64%, women at 60%, and people under age 40 at 59%.

With grocery prices harder to afford than they were one year ago in many swing districts, as another poll showed last week, 56% of people said raising the minimum wage is a high or medium priority for them, including 71% of Democratic voters.

The firm also asked voters in major cities with high costs of living, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, whether they supported raising the minimum wage to $30 in those areas, and found similar results.

Two-thirds said they backed gradually raising the minimum wage for all workers to $30 per hour.

“Support is strongest among the very voters Democrats must mobilize to win in 2026 and 2028: Black voters (80%), Latino voters (73%), young voters under 40 (72%), and women (72%) all back the proposal,” Lake Research Partners said.

Support for the proposal was highest in New York City, where Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani (D-36) has included a $30 minimum wage proposal as part of his mayoral campaign platform—one that’s heavily focused on making the city more affordable for all New Yorkers.

Seventy-two percent of New Yorkers said they supported the proposal.

The polling comes as endorsements from lawmakers and advocacy groups that have long been aligned with the Democratic Party have piled up for Mamdani—and as powerful party leaders in New York including US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have continued to refuse to publicly support the democratic socialist.

Saru Jayaraman, president of OFW, warned that a failure to deliver on affordability and living wages before the midterm elections next year will make ”saving democracy“ from President Donald Trump and the Republican Party impossible.

”We represent 13.6 million restaurant workers in America,“ Jayaraman told Common Dreams. ”And over the last nine months, they’ve repeatedly asked us: ‘You want us to come to a rally on a Saturday to save democracy? I work three jobs and I earn $3 [an hour]. What has democracy done for me lately? Nothing.’“

Along with electing candidates who center living wages and affordability, Jayaraman said in a statement that delivering on the issue ”means passing Living Wage for All legislation in every blue state next spring and ensuring no one is left behind.“

”If Democrats don’t deliver, the right will continue to exploit the affordability crisis to divide working people,“ she said. ”Delivering real affordability is how we restore trust—and how we save democracy.”

Joining OFW in launching the Make America Affordable Now PAC on Thursday are Democratic candidates who are centering affordability and living wages in their campaigns, including Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh (D-62), who is running for mayor of Minneapolis; Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson; and US Senate candidate Graham Platner of Maine.

CAMPUS LEADERS MOBILIZE TO BATTLE TRUMP’S ANTI-EDUCATION ‘COMPACT.’ Campus activist groups are banding together to fight against President Donald Trump’s proposed “compact” with universities in which they would receive priority access to federal funding in exchange for pledging support for aspects of the president’s political agenda, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (8/8).

The Sunrise Movement on Wednesday said that students and workers at the universities who have been invited by the Trump administration to sign the compact have “already gathered thousands of petition signatures” urging school administrators to reject it, and they are “planning coordinated campus protests in the coming weeks” to keep the pressure on their schools to resist any effort to infringe upon academic freedom.

The proposed deal with the Trump administration requires that universities abolish institutions on campus that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Additionally, it would completely overhaul admissions processes so that schools are not allowed to consider factors “such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, [or] religious associations.”

Critics have said that agreeing to these terms would essentially end schools’ academic freedom, and the Sunrise Movement compiled quotes from both students and professors explaining their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed deal.

Kelsey Levine, a student at the University of Virginia, said the school’s signature on the agreement would be tantamount to “selling out its most vulnerable populations of students: international students, transgender students, and students of color,” as well as “compromising its foundational principles of independence, truth-seeking, and democracy.”

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, described the Trump administration’s proposal as a “corrupt bribery attempt” that “would usher in a new draconian era of thought policing in American higher education, cripple our technological innovation capacity, and assault our very democracy.”

Evan Bowman, vice chair of Higher Ed Labor United, said that the battle against the Trump administration’s efforts to infringe upon academic freedom were being waged with an all-hands-on-deck effort.

“Workers, students, campus community members across this great country are coming together to fight for a higher education system that actually works for all,” he said. “One that is affordable, strengthens freedom and democracy, and stands up to its public mission.”

Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of politics at Princeton University, wrote in The Guardian on Tuesday that all universities must reject Trump’s proposal on the grounds that “it is a thinly veiled attack on academic freedom; it is a test case for whether Trumpists can get away with demanding loyalty oaths; it exceeds the president’s powers to begin with; and it is bound to achieve the opposite of its stated goal of ‘academic excellence in higher education.’”

Müller also linked the agreement to what he described as “Trump’s emerging mafia state,” in which “there is no guarantee that those bending the knee will not be bullied again.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Monday that only one institution, the University of Texas at Austin, has so far signaled support for the compact, while others have started to signal their opposition.