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The Republican Plot to Un-Educate America

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is an extinction-level event for higher education that would annihilate the country’s intellectual potential.

The Trump administration’s bombastic attacks on the nation’s most prestigious universities have commanded the public’s attention all year long. Now congressional Republicans are poised to dramatically expand that onslaught. If you think the last few months have been bad for Harvard, brace yourself—the “big, beautiful bill” is coming, and with it, a new dimension of destruction.

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In case it wasn’t already obvious.

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Republican Congresswoman Kat Cammack was denied medical care for her life-threatening ectopic pregnancy because of Florida’s 6-week abortion ban.

She says she is blaming “the left” for how she was treated at the hospital.

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This is one the dumbest arguments I have heard any top US official make. Embarrassing.

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Scoop: Trump launches MAGA PAC in effort to oust Rep. Massie from Congress

President Trump's political operation has launched an aggressive effort to unseat Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, its first such effort to defeat a sitting Republican incumbent, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: By going after Massie, Trump's team is looking to put wayward Republicans on notice that they're ready to play hardball.

Massie has attacked Trump over his strike on Iran, saying on X that it was "not Constitutional," prompting the president to fire back on Truth Social that the congressman is "not MAGA."

He also called Massie "weak, ineffective" and "disrespectful to our great military, and all that they stand for."

Massie was one of two House Republicans to vote against Trump's "big beautiful bill" last month, leading Trump to declare that he should be "voted out of office."

Zoom out: Trump's $500 million political apparatus is the most powerful, well-funded force in American politics — and gives Trump a weapon with which to target any lawmaker who crosses him.

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A group of US lawmakers from both major parties has urged Congress to assert its constitutional authority over war powers, following President Donald Trump’s decision to order strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. While Republican leaders in both the Senate and House have backed the military action, there appears to be little chance that any resolution curbing Trump’s powers would pass both chambers. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said he plans to force a Senate vote this week on a measure requiring Trump to end military operations against Iran unless Congress formally declares war.

Continue Reading.

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Trump believed Netanyahu about the danger of Iran's nuclear program over the assessment by Trump's own intelligence community. It' kind of like when Trump believed Putin over his own intelligence community about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

This is the danger posed by a president who makes impulsive decisions because of his "gut" rather than through logical analysis of the facts provided by experts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tulsi Gabbard left no doubt when she testified to Congress about Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year.

The country was not building a nuclear weapon, the national intelligence director told lawmakers, and its supreme leader had not reauthorized the dormant program even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels.

But President Donald Trump dismissed the assessment of U.S. spy agencies during an overnight flight back to Washington as he cut short his trip to the Group of Seven summit to focus on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters. In his view, Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb.

Trump’s statement aligned him more closely with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described a nuclear-armed Iran as an imminent threat, than with his own top intelligence adviser. Trump met with national security officials, including Gabbard, in the Situation Room on Tuesday as he plans next steps.

Five months into Trump's presidency, and we are in a war.

Did his supporters have that on the bingo card?

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‘I Feel Like I’ve Been Lied To’: When a Measles Outbreak Hits Home

From a lone clinic in Texas to an entire school district in North Dakota, the virus is upending daily life and revealing a deeper crisis of belief.

Video by Erin Schaff for The New York Times (format modified from source)

Most of what [Kiley Timmons] remembered about measles came from an old “Brady Bunch” episode, where the children celebrated staying home from school and played board games. “If you have to get sick, sure can’t beat the measles,” one of the children said.

“I feel like I’ve been lied to,” Kiley told his wife as his fever rose to 104 degrees. He tried to manage his symptoms at home with cod liver oil and vitamin D, supplements endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary. He isolated himself in the living room to avoid infecting his four children and coughed and dry-heaved his way through the night.

This is a painful article by Eli Saslow about how some people had no idea how seriously ill they could get by getting the measles.--and also sadly about a dedicated doctor who remains an anti-vaxxer. It is worth taking the time to read. This is a gift 🎁 link, so there is no paywall. Below are some excerpts.

He was a chiropractor by training, but in a remote part of West Texas with limited medical care, Kiley Timmons had become a first stop for whatever hurt. Ear infections. Labor pains. Oil workers who arrived with broken ribs and farmers with bulging discs. For more than a decade, Kiley, 48, had seen 20 patients each day at his small clinic located between a church and a gas station in Brownfield, population 8,500. He treated what he could, referred others to physicians and prayed over the rest.

It wasn’t until early this spring that he started to notice something unfamiliar coming through the door: aches that lingered, fevers that wouldn’t break, discolored patches of skin that didn’t make sense. At first, he blamed it on a bad flu season, but the symptoms stuck around and then multiplied. By late March, a third of his patients were telling him about relatives who couldn’t breathe. And then Kiley started coughing, too.

His wife, Carrollyn, had recently tested positive for Covid, but her symptoms eased as Kiley’s intensified. He went to a doctor at the beginning of April for a viral panel, but every result came back negative. The doctor decided to test for the remote possibility of measles, since there was a large outbreak spreading through a Mennonite community 40 miles away, but Kiley was vaccinated.

“I feel like I’m dying,” Kiley texted a friend. He couldn’t hold down food or water. He had already lost 10 pounds. His chest went numb, and his arms began to tingle. His oxygen was dropping dangerously low when he finally got the results.

“Positive for measles,” he wrote to his sister, in mid-April. “Just miserable. I can’t believe this.”

Twenty-five years after measles was officially declared eliminated from the United States, this spring marked a harrowing time of rediscovery. A cluster of cases that began at a Mennonite church in West Texas expanded into one of the largest outbreaks in a generation, spreading through communities with declining vaccination rates as three people died and dozens more were hospitalized from Mexico to North Dakota. Public health officials tracked about 1,200 confirmed cases and countless exposures across more than 30 states. People who were contagious with measles boarded domestic flights, shopped at Walmart, played tuba in a town parade and toured the Mall of America.

But what frightened Kiley more than the potential spread was the severity of the disease: About one in five unvaccinated people with measles will be hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as one in 20 children contracts a secondary pneumonia infection. More than one in 1,000 dies. Measles stops spreading when 95 percent of a community is immune, but national vaccination rates for children have fallen to less than 92 percent. In parts of West Texas, they’ve dropped below 80.

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Watch The Moment Bernie Sanders Finds Out Trump Launched Strikes On Iran…

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She missed all her civics classes !!!

Every president made America work while dealing with co- equal branches of power. It’s called checks and balances!! Thank you founding fathers!

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President Donald Trump and his team were in contact with top congressional Republicans before his strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, but top Democrats were not told of his plans until after the bombs had dropped, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.

The top two Republicans in Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, were both notified of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities ahead of time, according to multiple GOP sources.

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries received notifications shortly before the public announcement — and after the attack itself, people familiar with the notifications said. Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, were similarly not told until after the strikes had occurred, sources said.

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He has no plan. Republican Congress gives the guy with no plan unchecked power.

We all suffer.

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There's over 40,000 American Troops in the Region

Trump just put a target on every single one of them