Posted at 07:19 AM in Congress, Health, Health Care, Trump administration | Permalink | Comments (0)
Twenty years ago, Garry Kasparov, world chess champion from 1985-2000, retired from professional chess to help Russia resist what he calls Vladimir Putin’s "budding dictatorship."
Now, he writes in The Atlantic, "Putin is still in the Kremlin, and I’m writing this from New York City — my family has made its home there, as well as in Croatia, since we were forced to leave Russia in 2013."
And "President Donald Trump and his allies in power are trying to erect an authoritarian Mafia state like the one Vladimir Putin and his cronies established in Russia," he says.
"Never lose sight of the fact that the Trump administration’s aim is to weaken and devalue the machinery of government, on one hand, and privatize the levers of power on the other," Kasparov says.
Americans have a "well-stocked toolbox" with which to defend democratic institutions, he says: a free press, strong economy, separation of powers, and federalism (power shared by the national government and the states).
So "political pressure must be brought to bear — through the courts, the press, and the states, but also applied to legislators," he says.
"Americans should invest their time and money fighting in the arena where political power still lies: with the American people and in Washington, D.C., with the handful of Republican representatives who could put a stop to the power grab. Go after the weakest links and call them out. Promise to support them against Musk’s threats to fund primary challenges if they defy him—and to raise millions against them if they don’t."
"Four votes in the Senate. Three votes in the House. That’s all it takes," Kasparov says.
How Americans can take action right now:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee could meet as soon as the week of May 5 to work on making $880 billion in spending cuts from the programs under its jurisdiction — including Medicaid, the joint federal-state safety net program for health care, says Politico.
Twelve House Republicans have sent a letter to the House leadership opposing potential Medicaid cuts. They are, according to the American Hospital Association: Reps. David Valadao, R-Calif., Don Bacon, R-Neb., Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., Rob Bresnahan Jr., R-Pa., Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., Jen Kiggans, R-Va., Young Kim, R-Calif., Robert Wittman, R-Va., Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Jeff Hurd, R-Colo.
In the Senate, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., says he won’t support any proposal that would lead to cuts in Medicaid benefits for people in his state, Roll Call reports.
Posted at 07:04 AM in Congress, Foreign Affairs, Health Care, Trump, Trump administration | Permalink | Comments (0)
"Even now, as I travel around the country, I see the forces of repair gathering in neighborhoods and communities. If you’re part of an organization that builds trust across class, you’re fighting Trumpism. If you’re a Democrat jettisoning insular faculty-lounge progressivism in favor of a Whig-like [Whigs emphasized traditional morality and progressive improvements, Brooks says] working-class abundance agenda, you’re fighting Trumpism. If you are standing up for a moral code of tolerance and pluralism that can hold America together, you’re fighting Trumpism.
"The Democratic Party in the United States can make the erosion of democracy visible to the public and costly to the perpetrators. It can obstruct legislation in Congress, compete in electoral districts where Republicans typically run uncontested, and coordinate to maintain a presence, even if only in protest, in as many institutional spaces as possible. Recent attempts to lead town halls in districts where Republicans refuse to hold them are great examples of this strategy.
Posted at 06:42 AM in Congress, Economics and Finance, Government, Politics, Tools for stressful times, Trump, Trump administration | Permalink | Comments (0)
The results of three elections on Tuesday are “early warning signs” to Republicans and President Trump, says The Associated Press.
In the race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, conservative Judge Brad Schimel — who was endorsed by Trump and backed by Musk and his groups with $21 million — lost to liberal Judge Susan Crawford 45 percent to 55 percent in a state the president won in November.
And while Florida Republicans held on to two of the most pro-Trump House districts in the country, both candidates also significantly underperformed Trump’s November margins, AP says.
Republican Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer, fended off a challenge from Democrat Gay Valimont to win Florida’s 1st District seat vacated by Matt Gaetz by 15 points. Trump carried the district by about 37 points in November.
And Republican Randy Fine won his special election in Florida's 6th District to replace Rep. Mike Waltz, who stepped down to serve as Trump’s national security adviser. But Fine’s Democratic challenger, Josh Weil, lost by 14 points, less than five months after Waltz won the district by 33 points.
The elections — the first major contests since Trump’s return to power — are seen as an early measure of voter sentiment “as Trump works with unprecedented speed to dramatically upend the federal government, clashing with the courts and seeking revenge as he tests the bounds of presidential power,” AP says.
Also on Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., broke the record for the longest speech on the Senate floor. He spoke about his roots as a descendant of both slaves and slave-owners as he spoke for 25 hours, breaking the record of Sen. Strom Thurmond, the avowed segregationist from South Carolina who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Throughout his speech, Booker read letters from Americans about the impact Trump’s agenda is having on their lives, drawing historical parallels and warning that the country faces a “looming constitutional crisis.”
“This is a moral moment,” Booker said. “It’s not left or right; it’s right or wrong.”
Booker invoked the words of his mentor, the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis: “He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation.”
Protests of Trump actions are scheduled for April 5 in 1,000 places around the country.
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The Constitution gives Congress the primary power to control government spending, and the narrative at the beginning of last week was that Democrats would stand together to preserve the separation of power by rejecting the House GOP bill to fund the government through September.
The GOP lawmakers supporting the bill and Democrats opposing it gave the same reason, The New York Times noted. They said the stopgap bill gave President Trump latitude to continue his campaign to dismantle and defund major pieces of the federal government through Elon Musk’s DOGE.
On Tuesday, March 11, the House passed the GOP bill with the support of all but one Republican and just one Democrat.
But also on Tuesday, Wired reported that Musk actually “wanted a government shutdown — an aim that runs contrary to the White House’s stated desire to avoid one — in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, essentially achieving a permanent shutdown.”
On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor that Republicans lacked the 60 votes needed to get to debate on the House bill and called for a bill to keep the government open for another month to give Congress “time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass.”
On Thursday, Schumer said on the Senate floor that Republicans had rejected his proposal for negotiations. And that he would oppose a government shutdown, backing passage of the House-passed bill.
There was a “torrent of frustration and anger” after Schumer’s announcement, including calls that he be primaried in 2028, says The Associated Press.
The most detailed explanation of Schumer’s reasoning that I’ve seen is what he told Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Saturday:
“I think it was a very, very difficult decision between two bad options, a partisan Republican C.R. [continuing resolution] and a shutdown that Musk and Trump wanted. For me, the shutdown of the government would just be devastating and far worse than the Republican C.R. Let me explain: A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential. So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown. Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do.
“One of the Republican senators told us: We go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months, a year. And by then, their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone. And finally, one final point here, and that is that right now under the C.R., you can go to court and contest an executive order to shut something down. Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power. So, in conclusion, I knew this would be an unpopular decision. I knew that. I know politics. But I felt so strongly as a leader that I couldn’t let this happen because weeks and months from now, things would be far worse than they even are today, that I had to do what I had to do.
“We’ve had government shutdowns before, but never against such nihilists, such anti-government fanatics as Trump, DOGE, Musk. They’ve given us a playbook, by the way. [Russell] Vought has already has written what he wants to shut down if he got a shutdown. Trump wanted a shutdown. Musk wanted a shutdown. Ask yourself why.
“For weeks and months, we had said a shutdown is awful. And by the way, every Democrat, no matter how they voted, wanted to make sure there was no shutdown. We thought there could be a bipartisan plan, and I talked to Hakeem regularly during this period. We didn’t think that [Mike] Johnson could get all his votes. He did. When it came to the Senate on Tuesday, our hope was that Patty Murray could negotiate with the Republican senators and get that 30 day C.R., a bipartisan plan. She couldn’t. So we were faced with two awful choices. The choice has been made, but I think the whole Democratic Party is united on what I mentioned in the earlier broadcast, showing how bad Trump is in every way. We’re organizing this week and next week in Republican districts. We’re having rallies to not give tax breaks to millionaires, and we’re succeeding. We’re succeeding, Lulu. We’re bringing his numbers down.”
Steve Dennis, a Bloomberg reporter who’s a former colleague of my husband, said on Bluesky: “Schumer tells me Republicans might try to jam Democrats again in September, but thinks Trump will be less popular then and Republican appropriators might be more willing to stand up to him. He said they refused to do so now.”
A Times article says: “Many Democratic lawmakers continued to express deep frustration at Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday for having broken with most of his party to allow a Republican spending bill to pass, as the Democratic base increasingly demands stauncher resistance to President Trump’s far-reaching agenda.”
We can’t know whether a government shutdown or no shutdown would, in fact, be more damaging. But personally, I’m willing to give Schumer the benefit of the doubt.
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Congress oversees current laws and makes new ones. If you don't like the way things are or the way things are headed, write to your two senators and your representative (they pay attention to the mail — no joke — they want to be re-elected, after all). To find out who they are and to track legislation of interest to you, click on GovTrack.us.
After bills passed by Congress are signed by the president and become law, the executive branch writes regulations to implement them. The public is given time to comment before the regulations are finalized. For an easy way to track regulations and comment on them, click on regulations.gov.
But do you get discouraged, thinking there's no way to compete with big-money lobbyists? Here's what former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., says: "Money is important, but votes will beat money any day."