🇺🇸What #Trump's Second Presidency Has Meant for Health
‘This article synthesizes the damage and outlines what can and must be done to protect our #health and our #democracy’
By @scottlgreer.bsky.social @hjarman.bsky.social @xrkulik.bsky.social @mirandayaver.bsky.social
www.aft.org/hc/spring202...
It would appear Republicans failed to eliminate the Chemical Safety Board whose job it is to look into and learn from these awful events, but I’m not sure it’s healthy right now given the attack on impartial government agencies
Picked up my copy yesterday. I was paying close attention then, and have learned a lot from it. Honestly, a recommended read and I wasn’t sure it would be (thought it might be too painful and not enough new content, am happy to be wrong). Buy/ ask your library to buy!
the way this makes sense for RFK is that "healthy people" and "sick people" are ontological categories.
Great new stat from @senatebudget.bsky.social: of the $140 billion that Trump & Republicans gave ICE & CBP in the Big Beautiful Bill, $103 billion is still unobligated as of the end of March.
Now they’re asking for another $70 billion even though about 75% of the OBBBA money still remains unused.
While he was detained at Dilley for over four months, 13-year-old Gustavo Santiago said he felt as if he would “never get out.”
“I just ask that you don’t forget about us,” he told ProPublica in a video call.
(Published Feb.)
I've spent a lot of time in countries where graft and grifting are the norm and I assure you it is worth a truly immense cost to prevent that from taking hold in our society.
You do not want to live in that kind of society.
This is actually the Tesla business plan i believe
“Dodge late last year announced that the top-end 710-horsepower Durango SRT Hellcat — with an average combined rating of just 13 miles per gallon — would be available in all 50 states, including California, thanks to easing emissions regulations.”
The jokes write themselves
I had the pleasure of working on this article with @scottlgreer.bsky.social @hjarman.bsky.social and @xrkulik.bsky.social. We assess the impact of the dramatic cuts to health spending (including wrt insurance), attacks on science, undermining of regulation, and more.
www.aft.org/hc/spring202...
I am confident humans can rapidly devise ways to send costly signals- turn up in person, social connections- but those might contain far less information and far more bias. If comments or recommendations etc are slop but choices have to be made, the choices will be made on some other grounds.
Every system that was regulated, either explicitly or implicitly, by the fact that they were effortful for humans (letters of recommendation, government filings, essays, or, as this paper finds, lawsuits) will break under a wave of AI.
Wow
This is one of these facts, like Trump declaring himself the “insemination president” that I think should be kept in the public mind
Funny thing is, they could pass it today and probably be secure in the knowledge that their majority in the Supreme Court would somehow turn it into a pro-Republican measure
'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...
The Oxford Handbook of Social Policy in Canada edited by Rianne Mahon, Alison Smith, and I is now available for pre-orders and library orders:
global.oup.com/academic/pro...
All the chapters are already available online through subscribing university libraries:
academic.oup.com/edited-volum...
You ever try to code switch at work and fail? 😂
Remember, Democrats have repeatedly advanced measures to ban partisan gerrymandering and Republicans have voted against them time after time.
This is the game Republicans wanted to play. OK, then.
South Loop Sunset. This evening on the Chicago River.
I doubt voters, in Virginia or elsewhere, are the audience that interests Bezos
Starting a mid-decade redistricting war only to end up with -1 seats is the same fine strategic genius and subtle grasp of game theory that brough us the Strait of Hormuz.
“The possibility of a liberal median vote on the Supreme Court for the first time since 1970 was sitting there. Coverage of the 2016 election was dominated by a trivial story about Hillary Clinton’s compliance with email server management best practices. And no, I will never get over that.”
The new money from the Senate reconciliation plan could be used better by directly helping Americans instead of providing more funding for the Department of Homeland Security Select services and how many people could receive any of them through the end of fiscal year 2029 with funding equivalent to what is called for in the Senate Republican budget resolution Table with 6 columns and 2 rows. (column headers with buttons are sortable) People covered by Medicaid Children receiving free school lunch People housed in Section 8 Children given free child care Adults with free community college tuition (two-year degree) Senate stated deficit increase target ($70B) 2,188,000 22,702,000 2,412,000 1,364,000 2,196,000 Maximum allowable deficit increase ($140B) 4,375,000 45,403,000 4,824,000 2,729,000 4,392,000 Notes: Funding could be used for any of these individually, not all in combination. See Methodology for more details. Figures in the $140-billion deficit increase line may not appear to be double the $70-billion line due to rounding. Source: Author’s calculations from U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, “Concurrent Resolution setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2026 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2027 through 2035” (Washington: 2026); Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036” (Washington: 2026); Elizabeth Williams and others, “Medicaid Enrollment & Spending Growth: FY 2025 & 2026” (Washington: KFF, 2025); Food and Nutrition Service, “National School Lunch, Special Milk, and School Breakfast Programs, National Average Payments/Maximum Reimbursement Rates,” Federal Register 90 (140) (2025): 34827–34830; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Assisted Housing: National and Local” (last accessed March 2026); U.S. House of Representatives, “Division — Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 20…
New from me: Trump's plan to pump more money into ICE and CBP is a missed opportunity to help Americans.
Republicans want to give $70 bn to ICE/CBP, funding them through the end of Trump. Here's what we could do with that money instead.
Read more here: www.americanprogress.org/article/trum...
the flu vaccine was literally invented by the US Department of War during WW2
heritage.umich.edu/stories/the-...
Good article, depressing topic. I think most observers quoted are right: the UK politics have to change quite a lot if they are to interest, let alone convince the EU, and that will take time. Until then the UK will remain a sideshow to the EU.
I suspect she will transition from Much Too Soon to Nostalgia to Forgotten over about fifteen years with no stops for Reflection or Accountability
In fact, reforming the Supreme Court is a perfect - indeed, necessary - way to enable government action and strengthen democracy at the same time.
I am not sure this needs to be a trade off. There are policy and institutional design ways to do both- and fixing the renegade Supreme Court is #1 on that list.
Art 7(2) TEU: European Council may determine existence of a serious and persistent breach by a Member State of Art 2 TEU value(s)
Additional Art 7-like option now: Commission may ask Court to confirm existence of manifest and particularly serious breaches of Art 2 TEU value(s) by a Member State