1/ Why the confusion over COVID vaccines now? What’s changed isn’t the science. It’s the process. Policy is increasingly announced by officials online & outside the usual evidence review, creating mixed messages for families. on @cbsnews.com
1/ Why the confusion over COVID vaccines now? What’s changed isn’t the science. It’s the process. Policy is increasingly announced by officials online & outside the usual evidence review, creating mixed messages for families. on @cbsnews.com
"America’s leading physician groups are now openly defying Kennedy. U.S. vaccine consensus has officially shattered." www.vox.com/health/45922...
New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!
The answer cannot be that he gets to be on state ballots, and it’s up to Congress on J6 to decide whether to count Electoral votes from the states he wins.
Grace just sent this me this tok of a woman accidentally recording her cat in slow motions, and I am SOBBING from laughing so hard
Negotiated settlements to wars is a relatively new phenomenon in human history. Not the norm.
For me, Gord Downie's performance with the Tragically Hip on SNL of "Grace Too" in 95 is forever emblazoned in my brain. Total commitment and intensity that just keeps growing. It was the first time I ever heard The Hip. vimeo.com/261747317
my latest with @newrepublic.com liberalism isn't the 'referee of politics'. it's a player, & it must win newrepublic.com/article/1992...
WATCH: John Oliver clowns @reptimburchett 🤡 for claiming he sleeps in his office out of fear when he told @notusreports it’s to be more productive. Again: we’re told he slept in his office as a state legislator in NASHVILLE also. Tim’s lying. (Again) (H/T @bluegeorgia.bsky.social )
Here’s last night’s story about the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, what they have and haven’t accomplished so far, and a fun new idea for doctors who are looking to quit in style. youtu.be/3lzfH86avIc
I'll stop reposting this when it stops helping us understand why so many Democratic politicians are failing to rise to the occasion:
If you can't turn to the federal government for credible vaccine information, where can you go? Here are a number of good sites and sources. wapo.st/4m3QqKt
The trial court ruling is so profoundly wrong and incompatible with the plain language of the statute, really not clear how the trial judge could make such an error. This was not the practice in all NC counties…
At an event commemorating the 200th birthday of the United States, a sitting Supreme Court Justice was invited to celebrate "the memory of the Founders and the document they drafted in Philadelphia." Justice Thurgood Marshall declined
It’s “plainly unconstitutional” because there is a US Supreme Court case directly on point that so holds. Really no wiggle room for the district court.
*Extremely* interesting piece.
And nothing, but nothing, explains our politics more these days than status envy, resentment, and perceived grievances. But "we didn't teach kids to think good so now they love Trump" isn't really the issue. But again, it's tempting to think it's education - because you can *fix* that. /5x
Natl Council Mental Wellbeing, “SAMHSA Offers Guidance on Harm Reduction In a letter dated July 29, SAMHSA says it will no longer fund “harm reduction” activities it describes as incompatible with federal law and inconsistent with Admin
I am concerned that they chose the word "insect" instead of "bug" because that implies that it does not include arachnids.
In a reflection of the surreal state in which we live (and in which I made updates post-election), the book opens with Luigi and closes with Oz. Stay tuned…
Nailed it.
how does one survive flexing this hard
Apparently, Quinnipiac has him at 90% approval…AMONG REPUBLICANS. But underwater with the whole population.
👀In the name of “protecting vulnerable Americans” the Trump Administration will rip away Medicaid coverage from babies and toddlers👀 CMS announces Medicaid demos that 8 states are implementing to cover babies and young children continuously w/o gaps due to red tape will no longer be allowed.
Despite the concentration of young people at risk of serious mental illness and suicide, proactive efforts to screen foster children and get them the treatment they need have been widely absent from the system. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...
when the massage therapist is so good at their job, you completely forget you’re naked & covered in oil at a business establishment
Does the government have any legit reason to revoke his asylum protection after 11 years? Curious what their rationale even is.
Really excellent @tradeoffs.org interview with Kody Kinsley on the implementation challenges state Medicaid programs are staring down right now. "There have been exactly zero successes at implementing work requirements in this country... we've got two relatively well-documented struggle buses."
The @nytimes.com just posted an updated version of their detailed map of the 2024 election results, with the data available for download. This is invaluable in part because funding constraints have slowed down academic efforts at releasing precinct-level results. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
This showed up as a false positive for my podcast Democracy & Destiny but I still like it m.youtube.com/watch?v=xX-A...
Studies have shown that disruptions to insurance coverage can have serious health consequences. Now that the megabill has passed through Congress, advocates worry hundreds of thousands in NC could lose coverage www.wunc.org/health/2025-...
When a disabled young woman moved out of a hospital to her own apartment, the Trump administration celebrated — even though it's ending the federal program that made it possible.
One more thread on a new provision in Senate reconciliation bill that Senate GOP will misleadingly tout as expanding access to home- and community-based services for seniors and people with disabilities (section 71123) but in context of the bill, it won't be meaningful (1/x)
Thread on just posted Senate Budget Committee reconciliation bill language. Despite Byrd Rule problems the draconian #Medicaid cuts are still largely the same as in initial language from 1.5 weeks ago and remain harsher than the House passed bill's cuts. (1/x): www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/do...
NEW: @kff.org estimates show that federal #Medicaid spending in rural areas could decrease by 15% ($119 billion) based on the House reconciliation language, which is far more than the $15 billion that has been suggested for a rural health fund. www.kff.org/policy-watch...
This had me sobbing. I checked out the previous video on his feed, too, and it's just as funny. www.tiktok.com/@peter_mai_ is the account if you need to have more of this in your life.
As expected, it is time limited - available for only 5 years even though the massive #Medicaid cuts are permanent. It's capped and small: $3B per year, a total of $15B even though NRHA/Manatt Health estimate Senate bill hurts rural hospitals by $70B/10 years (2/x): www.ruralhealth.us/blogs/2025/0...
I assumed that an interest group put this together and Tillis was just circulating. Quite a different thing, IMO, if Tillis’ staff created the document.
Wow
Punch Bowl didn’t create the flyer. I’m trying to figure it who did.
Does anyone know the source of this flyer? Which group is circulating this specific flyer?
North Carolina's U.S. Senator Thom Tillis passed out this flyer to his Republican colleagues in the Senate today, noting that the GOP budget proposal puts 600,000 North Carolinians at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage. Tillis has also signaled that he will vote for the budget anyway.
"In this way, Medicaid isn’t just a safety net for the poor—it’s an invisible subsidy for everyone. When it shrinks, costs don’t disappear. They move to households, employers, local governments, school systems, ERs, jails. Everyone pays." prospect.org/politics/202...
Are you a teenage boy in the 1980s? That’ll help with the humor…
On work requirements, House version limited just to the Expansion population. I don’t see such limiting language in Senate version…
Original House version was 01/29. Final House was no later than 12/31/26. Senate also 12/31/26
Section 71124
I’m not able to tell whether the work requirement in the Senate version applies to all Medicaid enrollees, or just the expansion population like the House. Not seeing language limiting it to expansion.
When School Board Elections Lose Their Voice www.educationnext.org/when-school-... To my mind school boards illustrate broader problems with much-romanticized "local control".
👇🏼
I'm just glad one of these men has the nuclear codes and the other has all our personal data.
The legislation requires a 10% FMAP reduction for states that provide Medicaid benefits, or use the infrastructure that Medicaid has paid for, to provide services to undocumented. That’s the hook.
New @rollingstone.com by me: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol... Judges have told Trump, if he wants #DOGE -style austerity, he must get statutory reorg. authority from Congress. The GOP's Reorganizing Govt. Act of 2025 would give him exactly that. Extra material: douglaslucas.com/blog/2025/06...
POCAN: How many federal dollars go to funding illegal aliens getting Medicaid? VOUGHT: Because of the money launderi-- POCAN: How many federal dollars go to illegal aliens for Medicaid? Simple question. VOUGHT: It's not a simple question
Which, of course, isn’t named for the Senator. It’s named for his Admiral grandfather and father…Senator was added to the billing in 2018…
Just got around to this interview with Jon Gruber, which is a useful overview of the House bill — and its potential consequences — ahead of the Senate reconvening this week tradeoffs.org/2025/05/22/w...
Ready or not, the 2025 hurricane season starts today.
'Scott Bessent called [Musk] out and said, 'You promised us a trillion dollars (in cuts), and now you're at like $100 billion, and nobody can find anything, what are you doing?'' Bannon recounted. If Bessent believed DOGE was going to identify $1T in cuts, he’s a bigger fool than Trump.
This is the kind of sweeping, truth-telling journalism we need more of. Good job, AP.
Can we see this agreement w China to determine whether China is in compliance or not?
I want to emphasize that this is 18,000 avoidable deaths per year *of Medicare enrollees.* They aren't in CBO's "uninsured" count — they're older people and folks with disabilities on Medicare who won't get extra financial help because of a proposed moratorium on a regulation.
Who is he talking about?
Look at how much Americans underestimate income gaps in their country! The black line is the actual gap. The densities show where people think the gap is (grey/dashed line shows the mean perceived levels)
The firm that will run North Carolina’s Hurricane Helene recovery program in the western mountains, as it sought to win the critical contract, described itself as the only one up to the task. via @ncnewsline.com www.newsfromthestates.com/article/how-...
On Sunday, the House Budget Committee advanced the Republican budget reconciliation package that includes provisions that would reshape the ACA. @kff.org has updated our resources examining the health provisions of the bill. t.co/YQWMAEXnfv
By deleting a few imp words from the E&C bill, the reconciliation bill the Hse Rules cmte is likely to advance creates an unconscionable decision for states: end health coverage for lawfully residing immigrant kids & pregnant adults or face steep federal Medicaid funding cuts.
They’re even learning to use the “scold the stupid child” approach with their former colleagues. Excellent. bsky.app/profile/atru...
"The right thing to do is not to cut medicaid" - Sen. Hawley. Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
As Hurricane Helene barreled toward Yancey County in North Carolina, the predictions were grim. But there were no evacuation orders, even for the people living in homes along vulnerable rivers and creeks. Few grasped what was coming. @jenniferberryhawes.bsky.social w/ @cgaribay.bsky.social
Tug boat desperately trying to catch up and head this off
6 years ago, I knew the car I was looking for. They delivered to my house on a flatbed truck, handled closing in my driveway. Super easy.
The widely cited CBO topline estimates for E&C Medicaid cuts - $625 billion, 7.6 billion lose coverage - leave out these points: 1. $625 is Part 1, Medicaid. With Part 2, marketplace rules, total is $715 billion 2. 7.6 million is a Medicaid-only *uninsured* estimate. 11.7 million lose... 1/
Also, that tour ended a few months ago and she’s not been in the public eye.
The implementation considerations for this is unfathomable. It takes 18-24 months to build the system. You can't start building the system until you have regulations. It takes 12-18 to regulate.
This is Jess. She is very suspicious of you. Has been within six inches of you all week, but still thinks you're up to something. 13/10
As Republicans propose to require cost-sharing in Medicaid for certain types of services, it is worth revisiting this QJE paper, The Health Costs of Cost Sharing academic.oup.com/qje/article-...
The notion that the proposed #Medicaid work requirements do not impact individuals with disabilities, ignores the fact that many people with disabilities are in the expansion group or that they may be caught up new red tap hurdles www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2025/me...
AOC: We need to be talking about ICE agents and the cowardly policy of covering their faces — and, in many cases, their identification… The idea that we’re going to allow a paramilitary force to bloom, one that isn’t accountable to the Constitution… we’ve got another thing coming.
Arizona, Arkansas, and Ohio all have pending waiver proposals at CMS, seeking approval to implement Medicaid work requirements. Other states will likely soon join them. Here's my overview: www.healthinsurance.org/glossary/med...
Sandra Day O’Connor also retired (largely due to her husband’s Alzheimer’s) well before she died. Arguably still in her prime.
Is the Library of Congress an Executive Branch agency, or under the jurisdiction of Congress?
Let me run down some other things in the bill: • 9-year delay of the Biden safe staffing rule that ensured a minimum amount of nurses per nursing home resident. So they're paying for tax cuts by cutting down on who watches your grandma.
CBO issues estimates of enrollment/coverage losses from major #Medicaid cut proposals under discussion by House GOP. As expected millions lose Medicaid coverage and end up uninsured. But these estimates are of each proposal separately and don't show the cumulative impact: www.cbo.gov/publication/...
The WHCOS should never allow cabinet secretaries to publicly question each other’s competence and motives in live press interviews. Much less the president.
This is now 2 posts on this topic where Trump appears unaware that the war continued in the Pacific Theater for another 4 months…
Ummm…there’s already such a place in Colorado… www.bop.gov/locations/in...
Just passing along some friendly advice on how to approach potential changes to the Australian health care system @drruthmitchell.bsky.social
On a free country, the government does not limit the number of dolls a person can purchase or own.
Very powerful and important op-ed. To provide context: The corporatization has been decades in the making.Since the advent of DRGs in the 80s, the shift from care to cost control accelerated, with PE,hospital consolidation, and EHR optimization all reinforcing a model where metrics displace meaning.
I think a lot about CJ Roberts writing this in 2024: "The dissents' positions in the end boil down to . . . fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President 'feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.'"
Really terrific @tradeoffs.org interview with my colleague, Ari Ne'eman, on what Medicaid cuts could mean for people with disabilities — and how to think about this moment in the arc of disability rights activism
FWIW, that’s not what he said in this clip. Here, he’s making the claim that the US was a small part of global slave trade over the course of a millennium…a non sequitur, to be sure, not not a statement slavery wasn’t that bad.
Current portraits in the Oval: Teddy Roosevelt John Adam’s Ben Franklin George Washington Thomas Jefferson FDR Andrew Jackson Ronald Reagan Martin Van Buren Ok…MVB was a placeholder. But the rest?
This exchange is so very telling. Trump repeatedly claims the photoshopped MS-13 on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's knuckles is real, Terry Moran keeps telling him it isn't, prompting Trump to say this: "I never heard of you. I picked you. You’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed... Just say yes!"
Or 1994, when Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA) lost his seat when the GOP Contract with America swept into power.
"The National Museum of African American History and Culture is not a place that traffics in improper ideology," Clint Smith writes. "It is a museum that recognizes that America has been suffused in improper ideologies for most of its history." https://theatln.tc/y3RevJzO
Austin Scott previews how House Rs plan to cut Medicaid: "The federal govt is paying 90% of the Medicaid expansion. What we've talked about is moving that 90% level of the expansion back... nobody would be kicked off Medicaid as long as governors decided they wanted to continue to fund the program"
i don't love matty but he's not wrong here
![Tweet from Mattyglesias: MAGA nostalgia economics — make everyone poorer so desperate women will date me. [embedded image] What is true, though, is that I think a lot of nostalgia economics is about gender rules. Were people actually richer in 1965 than in 2025? No, of course not. And no amount of torturing the economic data will make that true. It is also not true that men were richer in 1965 than in 2025. Nor is it true that blue collar men were richer in 1965 than in 2025. But what is true is that the majority of the economic gains over the past 60 years have accrued to women rather than to men. This purely relative loss in status turns out to have some implications for men’s absolute well-being. Women are, as a result of economic empowerment, less desperate to date, marry, or stay married to the average man. Now, of course, nobody is going to come out and say, “I favor policies that would make men somewhat poorer and also make women a lot poorer because I think in this poorer society, girls will be desperate to go out with me.” Because if you said that, you’d sound like an evil moron. So it feels better to convince yourself that people were actually richer 60 years ago and that’s why you’re nostalgic for the good old days. But it’s not true! https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1913179150984098231?s=46&t=_Iuv66jfWcPQKvOES6DDTQ](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:j2kmiyhld5btzozgzwy3lc2m/bafkreifp3gpdhchbi44mwu2wjjwta6qwqmof2te664eph6c7s23uypjawm@jpeg "Click to view full size")