A Culture Of Disdain For Lower Courts

 

Vance Cases The Tie-Breaking Vote To Pass Trump's Big Ugly Bill

Three Republican senators voted against the bill - Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina). All Democrats and Independents voted against the bill.

The bill must now go back to the House because of changes the Senate made to the bill passed previously by the House.

The Republicans passed a bill that a majority of the voters don't want. They passed a bill that takes desperately needed funds from the poor and working classes to give it to the rich (who don't need it). And they did it to please a narcissist who doesn't care about them or their party.

They knew what they were doing. It is the most blatant example of cruelty and political cowardice I've ever seen!

Republicans Change "Get Well" To "Get Lost"

Political Cartoon is by Clay Bennett in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
 

The Republicans Will Regret Drastically Cutting Medicaid

The following post is by Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman: 

If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which is, incredibly, the legislation’s actual name — goes into effect, Medicaid will be cut by around a trillion dollars over the next decade. 

What is Medicaid? Like Medicare, it’s government-provided health insurance. But unlike Medicare, it’s “means-tested”: your income has to fall below a certain level before you’re eligible. This makes Medicaid a program for the poor or near-poor — and that, for many on the right, suggests a political opportunity.

Ostensibly, the right attacks Medicaid because it costs too much. I mean, it’s a government program, which means that it must be riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And surely there must be millions of lazy people getting health care through Medicaid who should be getting up off their couches and going to work.

The reality is that none of this is true.

No doubt there’s waste and fraud in Medicaid, as there is in any system created and run by human beings. But overall Medicaid provides essential health care relatively cheaply. Once you adjust for the relatively poor health of the average Medicaid recipient — chronic illness can make you poor! — Medicaid appears to have significantly lower costs than private insurance:

Actually, in some ways Medicaid resembles the health care systems of other advanced countries, which are much cheaper than U.S. health care (while achieving equally good results) largely because they’re more cost-conscious, willing to bargain hard with drug companies, say no to expensive procedures of dubious medical benefit, and so on.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients either are working or can’t work — they’re disabled or need to stay home to care for others:

Oh, and one thing we know from repeated experience is that adding work requirements to Medicaid does not, in fact, lead to more people working.

I don’t know how many of the right-wingers clamoring for drastic Medicaid cuts believe the stories they tell about waste and lazy Americans who won’t get a job. My guess, though, is that they don’t care whether these stories are true. They’re going after Medicaid because they see it as a soft target — a program that helps lower-income Americans, and who cares about them? Medicaid’s beneficiaries, they imagine, are the new welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

But a funny thing has happened to public opinion about Medicaid. The share of Americans covered by the program has increased a lot over the past 15 years:

And the fact that so many Americans now receive Medicaid means that many peoplehave either benefited from the program or know people who have. And as a result the program has become remarkably popular:

83 percent favorability — 74 percent among Republicans! — is incredibly high. In fact, Medicaid appears to have slightly higher favorability than apple pie.

What this suggests is that Republicans who consider Medicaid a soft target, a program that only benefits inner-city rats, are going to be shocked by the blowback if they do manage to eviscerate this key piece of American health care.

The Rich Dance While The Poor Suffer

Political Cartoon is by R.J. Matson at e pluribus cartoonum.
 

The GOP Is Willing To Kill 51,000 People A Year To Give More Money To The Rich

 

We Should Not Have Any Billionaires

 

Pride In The U.S. Slips To A New Low

 

The charts above are from the Gallup Poll -- done between June 2nd and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

The Republican Opera

Political Cartoon is by Gary Huck at huckkonopackicartoons.com.
 

Is This Really What You Want ICE Doing With Your Tax Dollars?

The following is from an article by Philip Bump in The Washington Post. It highlights some of the actions by ICE agents - actions I think most Americans would not approve.

Jermaine Thomas, born to a U.S. Army soldier on a military base in Germany, was deported by ICE to Jamaica — a country he’d never been to before — after being arrested for “suspected trespassing” in Texas.

A former member of the Afghan National Army who’d aided the U.S. during the war in that country and who was seeking asylum was arrested by ICE at his home in Texas. Brought to the U.S. after the military withdrawal in 2021, he now has two children who are U.S. citizens.

Several immigrants from Iran have recently been detained. Madonna Kashanian, 64, was seized while gardening outside her house in New Orleans. An Iranian man who came to the U.S. on a fiancé visa was arrested and separated from his pregnant wife. A Christian church in Los Angeles has seen a number of Iranian immigrant congregants arrested, including in the wake of the recent hostilities.

Christianity Today has documented several other religious leaders who were detained by immigration officers, including a pastor and a deacon from separate Florida congregations.

Kerlin Moreno-Orellana was arrested for illegal dumping (at the behest of his employer, according to an advocacy organization) and sent to a detention camp, leaving two children ages 8 and 10 behind.

A man who sold ice cream in California was arrested by masked agents who left his cart unattended on the sidewalk.

A woman from El Salvador who called police in Houston to allege abuse by her ex-husband was taken into custody after the police reported her to ICE.

ICE agents in Massachusetts smashed the window of a car with people inside of it as they sought an alleged fugitive. The occupant of the car was arrested — and then later released from custody.

Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre’s wife was “ripped … away from me and her children, from her breastfeeding … newborn daughter” by ICE, he told CBS News. As she was being handcuffed, she handed her wedding ring to her husband. Another Marine veteran (and staunch Trump supporter) experienced a similar disruption.

So did a firefighter in Arizona, after his wife was instructed by ICE to bring her children to an upcoming hearing. (This tactic is increasingly common.) The children now face deportation hearings of their own.

A 6-year-old with leukemia was among those arrested at an immigration court in California. (In New York, children as young as 4 have been forced to serve as their own legal representatives during immigration hearings.)

A newly married woman who has lived in the U.S. since she was 8 was arrested as she tried to reenter the country after her honeymoon and is now in ICE detention.

A pregnant woman arrested by ICE in Tennessee lost the baby she was expecting with her American partner while in detention and was later deported.

The arrest of a long-standing member of a Missouri community sparked national outcry in May. Carol Mayorga was later released. ICE has also detained citizens (including a pregnant woman), green-card holders and people attending citizenship hearings.

No One Left To Make His Big Mac

Political Cartoon is by Mike Konopacki in The Capital Times.
 

The Fourteenth Amendment Was Always Meant To Include Children Of Immigrants

The following is part of an excellent article by Joshua Zeitz at Politico.com:

Trump contends that the amendment does not apply to immigrants. His argument rests on two conceits:

First, that the text of the amendment specifically limits birthright citizenship to “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — which, conservatives argue, does not include immigrant children, as they owe allegiance to a foreign power and are not fully subject to U.S. sovereign authority.

Second, as the president explained on Friday, he believes the framers intended only to confer citizenship on freedmen (retroactively) and their children (prospectively). In effect, they were attempting a constitutional repudiation of the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which the Court in 1857 denied that Black persons could be citizens.

We know both of these arguments are shambolic, because the framers told us so.

Senator Jacob Howard, a Republican from Michigan, drafted the birthright citizenship language and was clear in his intent. “This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States,” he explained.

But Howard qualified his explanation. “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

At first blush, it would seem that meant to exclude the children of foreign-born immigrants from enjoying birthright citizenship. But the Senate debate makes clear he and his colleagues meant only to exclude the children of foreign diplomats and officials in the United States on business.

In a key exchange, Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania fretted that the amendment would expose the United States to mass demographic upheaval, specifically by making immigrant children citizens. He worried particularly about “Gypsie” (or Roma) immigrants in his home state and a small but growing population of Chinese immigrants in California. In response, John Conness, a senator from California, who supported the bill, agreed with Howard that the citizenship clause applied to immigrants, affirming that the amendment “relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. … I am in favor of doing so. … We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.”

Setting aside their crude racial determinism, the exchange makes clear that Howard and other Republicans intended the amendment to apply to all persons born in the U.S., not just freedmen. Cowan was the only Republican senator to vote against the amendment, specifically because of his concerns over birthright citizenship and immigration. In other words, even the amendment’s opponents understood its meaning and intent. . . .

There was essentially no disagreement about the children of immigrants, who were understood to qualify for citizenship.

And the Supreme Court agreed in a landmark 1898 decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were barred from naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion Act. After a trip abroad, he was denied re-entry to the U.S., prompting a legal battle over whether he was a citizen. In a 6–2 decision, the court ruled that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ nationality or immigration status — establishing a foundational precedent for birthright citizenship that remains in place today. . . .

The history is clear on this point. If the Supreme Court’s conservative majority actually believes in originalism, that means the legality of birthright citizenship is a matter of history — and the history is undeniable. Lawmakers on both sides of the issue acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment would extend birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants.

The Top Deck Republicans Don't Care About Anyone Else

 Political Cartoon is by Matt Wuerker at Politico.com.

Banning Transgender Troops Is Just Bigotry