Is It Breaking News or a Distraction?
Spoiler Alert!: It's a distraction.
OMG, there’s breaking news, alert the media! Call your congresspeople and senators, this is the most important issue we face today…Donald (or is it Donakd?) Trump, President of the United States said the word FUCK to reporters.
Who cares if the National Guard is still occupying Los Angeles, as part of Trump’s apparent war against California, the biggest donor state in the US and the 4th largest economy in the world?
Does it matter that the military, led by the incompetent and often inebriated Pete Hegseth, struck Iran with missiles that definitely did not “totally” obliterate the nuclear program but did put our country at serious risk?
Why worry if your brown-skinned employees, neighbors, friends, or parents get picked up by armed, masked ICE agents who might be agents from MAGA hell but also might be focused on meeting their quota of 3,000 arrests per day? Isn’t that old news?
Are you concerned about hard-working people trying to live the American Dream being deported without due process? Are you aware that many are being sent to prisons in dangerous countries around the world where they don’t speak the language and could face torture, death, or trafficking?
Does it matter if, despite pledging that the government would target criminals, ICE has arrested only 6% of immigrants who are known to have committed murders but is racking up huge numbers by arresting gardeners, new moms, and people showing up to their immigration appointments and check-ins?
If your parents were immigrants who came to the United States to build a better life and you were born here, do you care if the Trump-Republican government gets the Supreme Court to agree with the possibility that previous lawmakers intended birthright citizenship to apply only to the “babies of slaves,” more than 100 years of precedence be damned?
Or…is all of the above intended as a fucking distraction from the Republicans’ budget bill?
That “Big Bill” is NOT Beautiful…
The Big Ugly Bill, already passed by the House, would cut Medicaid spending by $793 billion, which means 10.3 million fewer Americans would be able to enroll in Medicaid over the next 10 years. (By the way, more than half of the people on Medicaid are children, seniors, or disabled people.)
In real terms, more than 51,000 people will die every single year because the Republicans took away money for health care so they could give tax cuts to billionaires.
As the population ages, more people require services provided through Medicaid, like nursing homes or memory care facilities. One of us has dealt with this firsthand and has seen just how Medicaid saves lives. A family member, who has been developmentally disabled since birth, lost his mother and primary caregiver to COVID. He was unable to manage life without her. As his mental and physical health declined, he had to move into a nursing home. While his mother thought she had planned for his future without her, with a 401K-type plan, she hadn’t anticipated the $16,000 per month nursing home room. His funds were gone in a year, and now Medicaid pays for his care. Without it, he might literally be on the streets, with no medical care, no safe place to live, no one who even knows his name. This story, or a similar one, is repeated millions of times across the country.
But Sen. Mitch McConnell told his worried-over-their-reelection Republican colleagues that Americans will “get over it.”
They sure will – if getting “over it” means dying because you can’t get health care or food and shelter.
Of course, for some Republicans, these deadly numbers are not good enough. Sen. Roger Wicker highlighted the sheer grotesqueness of this bill when he said, “I think we have a group of folks that think that we’re not cutting enough spending and a group that thinks we’re taking too many cuts, so we’re trying to find that sweet spot.”
The sweet spot? THE SWEET SPOT?! There is no freakin’ sweet spot for this Big Deadly Bill.
“Even short of the worst-case scenario, Americans’ health would be worse off under the Republican bill …,” writes Dylan Scott in Vox. Numbers for health care are certain to fall off the cliff:
700,000 fewer people with an actual doctor
285,000 fewer people having their cholesterol checked
139,000 fewer women getting mammograms
and the list goes on.
One common feature about these cuts? “The people affected are low-income and disproportionately Black and Hispanic,” writes Scott. No wonder most Republicans are fans.
The American people aren’t falling for it. Recent polls show that 55% of Americans oppose the Bullshit Billionaire Bailout Bill. Only 31% of Americans actually support it. This makes the bill one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation in decades (along with several other bills from Trump 1.0.) Sadly, neither the House nor the Senate seem to care about what their constituents want, even if they only want to live.
What can you do?
Let your congressmembers know exactly what you think. Remind them they are supposed to be working for you.
Resistbot makes it so easy. Here’s a petition that will be sent to officials: https://resist.bot/petitions/PDDOCW
You can call your reps: ☎️ (202) 224-3121. Don’t know what to say? No problem, we’ve got a script for you.
Phone banks will be taking place until the hopefully-not-bitter end. Join one virtually: https://www.mobilize.us/wfpower/event/796084/?utm_source=indivisible&utm_medium=indivisible
And if you’re still on X, make some noise over there!
