Dispatches

‘REPUBLICANS ARE GEARING UP FOR CLASS WAR,’ DEMOCRAT WARNS, AS R’S PUSH FOR HUGE MEDICAID CUTS. Policy analysts and Democratic lawmakers raised alarm over the weekend at a leaked document indicating that House Republicans intend to pursue massive cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides sometimes lifesaving coverage to roughly 80 million people across the United States, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams.org (11/13).

Near the top of a list of “spending reform options” that House Republicans are considering to help finance additional tax cuts for the rich and large corporations are proposals that would strip Medicaid coverage from millions of Americans, including children, seniors and people with disabilities.

One of the changes listed in the leaked document, obtained by Politico last week, would convert Medicaid’s funding structure to a “per-capita cap,” under which the federal government would only provide states with a fixed amount of funding for each beneficiary rather than paying a percentage of states’ overall Medicaid costs.

The document, which reportedly comes from the House Budget Committee, suggests the reform would result in up to $918 billion in cuts over a 10-year period.

Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families, noted in a blog post that such a change would “radically restructure Medicaid financing.”

“These funding caps are typically designed to fail to keep pace with expected growth in healthcare costs in order to severely cut federal Medicaid spending, with those cuts growing larger and larger over time,” Park wrote. “Moreover, the caps would also fail to account for any unexpected cost growth such as from another public health emergency or a new, costly drug therapy, which would make the federal funding cuts even larger than originally anticipated.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned in an analysis that cuts to federal funding under a per-capita cap “would impose significant strain on states and put millions of people at risk of losing benefits and coverage.”

The document also includes a call to “Equalize Medicaid Payments for Able Bodied Adults”—a proposal seen as an indication that the GOP plans to go after the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion—and confirms that Republicans intend to push for Medicaid work requirements, which have proved disastrous in the states that have tried such mandates.

Park argued that work requirements—and the “onerous red tape” they entail—would amplify the harms of cuts to federal Medicaid funding.

“As a result, these proposals would take away coverage and access from tens of millions of low-income children, families, seniors, people with disabilities, and other adults who rely on Medicaid,” Park wrote. “Moreover, because Medicaid is the largest source of federal funding for states—accounting for 56.1% of all federal funding for state budgets in 2024—these large cost-shifts to states would also threaten deep, damaging budget cuts to other state spending, including for K-12 education.”

Overall, the leaked Republican document proposes up to $5.7 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years—with Medicaid cuts making up $2.3 trillion of that total—as President-elect Donald Trump pushes for a sprawling reconciliation bill that includes another round of tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.

In addition to Medicaid cuts, the House GOP policy menu calls for slashing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and federal nutrition assistance, repealing “major Biden health rules,” and eliminating renewable energy funding under the Inflation Reduction Act.

“This won’t lower costs for Americans,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) wrote in response to the GOP document. “These cuts would only help bankroll Trump’s tax cuts for his billionaire friends and corporate interests.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the leaked policy list shows that “Republicans are gearing up for a class war against everyday families in America.”

“This list outlines a plan to increase child hunger, boot tens of millions off their health insurance, and lay off hundreds of thousands of clean energy workers to fund tax handouts for the wealthy,” said Wyden. “It won’t be any consolation to struggling Americans that their hardship allows some rich buddy of Donald Trump’s to buy a bigger yacht.”

L.A. RENTER ADVOCATES DEMAND EVICTION MORATORIUM, RENT FREEZE AS LANDLORDS ‘CASH IN ON CRISIS.’ With some Los Angeles-area landlords jacking up rental listing prices by 50% or more as historic wildfires rage, housing advocates in the nation’s second-largest city are calling for an immediate eviction moratorium and rent freeze, Brett Wilkins noted at CommonDreams.org (11/13).

As California authorities have noted in recent days, state Penal Code Section 396 prohibits taking “unfair advantage” of consumers during times of emergency or disaster. Landlords cannot raise rent by more than 10% of the price immediately prior to the emergency. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Jan. 7.

“It’s called price gouging,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, also a Democrat, said during a Saturday news conference. “It is illegal. You cannot do it. It is a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and fines.”

That isn’t stopping some landlords from trying to profit from the deadly wildfires. Tenant rights advocate Chelsea Kirk—the director of policy and advocacy at the L.A.-based Strategic Actions for a Just Economy—has created an open database of more than 100 Zillow listings in which landlords have raised asking prices for rents by more than the legal limit, and in some cases by over 50 or even 75% or more.

Activists said there are two related things officials can do right now to mitigate the disaster’s impact on renters.

“We need a rent freeze and eviction moratorium,” the anti-capitalist collective People’s City Council—Los Angeles said on social media.

NOlympics LA said, “L.A. City Council needs to implement a rent freeze NOW.”

“Price gouging in the wake of disaster is unacceptable, this is simple and could be done immediately but will L.A. leaders even propose it?” the group added. “We need an eviction moratorium to stop landlords [from] evicting people to cash in on crisis.”

Temporary eviction moratoriums and rent freezes were implemented at the national, state, and local level during the COVID-19 pandemic. While California’s moratorium did not protect everyone from eviction, with thousands of renters removed from their homes under various exceptions, evictions plummeted thanks to the policy. However, by 2023 eviction rates had returned to—or surpassed—pre-pandemic levels.

The L.A. Tenants Union noted that “in the midst of all this destruction, eviction courts are still churning.”

TRUMP ALLIES LAUNCH $20M EFFORT TO CONVINCE WORKING CLASS TO BACK TAX SCAM 2.0. A right-wing advocacy group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers announced Jan. 13 the launch of a $20 million campaign to promote an extension of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the rich and large corporations, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams.org (11/13).

In a 60-second ad, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) characterizes the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a boon to “hardworking Americans” and small businesses—and warns that allowing provisions of the law to expire at the end of this year as scheduled would be disastrous for the working class.

“This year, Congress is facing a countdown to a crisis that threatens family budgets nationwide,” Ross Connolly, AFP’s regional state director, said in a statement (11/13). “We are proud to partner with the incoming Trump administration to protect prosperity and ensure that Congress acts.”

AFP is a 501(c)(4) organization that describes itself as a “grassroots” movement despite being launched by Charles Koch and his late brother, David—two of the most notorious right-wing billionaires in U.S. politics.

The group said its new 50-state campaign represents “the largest effort by a conservative organization” to support President-elect Donald Trump’s legislative agenda as he prepares to take office next week. The campaign, according to AFP, will include “over 1,000 meetings” at congressional offices, “in-district events” with activists and lawmakers, and “roundtables with job creators.”

The campaign aims to “reach millions of voters on the phone and at their doorsteps,” AFP said.

AFP’s description of the impacts of the 2017 tax law flies in the face of resounding evidence showing that wealthy Americans—not ordinary workers—were the chief beneficiaries and are poised to reap most of the rewards once again if Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress extend the measure’s soon-to-expire provisions.

STATE-LEVEL ATTACKS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS DECRIED AS ‘PART OF A NATIONAL PLAYBOOK.’ Critics are sounding the alarm on a fresh wave of attacks on public schools by Republican state lawmakers, calling their efforts part of a broader agenda to privatize public education.

Indiana’s H.B. 1136—introduced by Reps. Jake Teshka (R-7), Jeffrey Thompson (R-28), and Timothy O’Brien (R-78)—would dissolve public school districts in which more than 50% of students attend private or charter schools based on fall 2024 averages. All remaining public schools in affected districts would be converted to charter schools, which are privately owned and operated but taxpayer-funded, Brett Wilkins noted at CommonDreams.org (11/13).

According to Capital B Gary, “The bill’s provisions are estimated to dissolve five school corporations statewide, including Indianapolis Public Schools, Tri-Township Consolidated School Corporation in LaPorte County, Union School Corporation southeast of Muncie, and Cannelton City Schools near the Kentucky border in Perry County.”

Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) condemned the proposal, saying it “strongly opposes House Bill 1136 or any bill this legislative session that threatens local authority and community control of public schools.”

“H.B. 1136 proposes dissolving five school corporations, including IPS, by converting schools to charter status and eliminating local school boards,” the district continued. “This harmful legislation would strip communities of their voice, destabilize our financial foundations, and further jeopardize the education of approximately 42,000 students.”

The Indiana Democratic Party said on social media in response to the bill: “The GOP supermajority is continuing their attacks on local public schools. This time, they’re threatening to dissolve dozens of schools across the state into charters, leaving around a million Hoosiers without a traditional public school option.”

“For years, many public schools have struggled with funds being diverted to charter schools with no accountability,” the party added in a separate post. “Our public schools are the backbone of communities across the state, and we must protect them. More charter schools means less oversight for taxpayers.”

BIDEN BEQUEATHS STRONG ECONOMY FOR TRUMP. The U.S. economy added 256,000 jobs in December, beating economist’s expectations and cementing the fact that President Joe Biden is leaving Donald Trump a strong economy as his term comes to a close, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (11/10).

The report showed unemployment fell to 4.1%, while wage growth rose 0.3% to an average hourly rate of $35.69. Ultimately, wage growth in 2024 rose 3.9%—outpacing the 2.7% inflation rate, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The “economy remains very robust,” Harvard economics professor Jason Furman wrote in a post on X. “A variety of indicators show the labor market has stabilized. There doesn’t seem to be any pressing reason to change interest rates any time soon.”

The report, released by the BLS, is the final full monthly report of Biden’s tenure.

It showed the U.S. had positive job growth every month Biden was in office. And average hourly wages today are higher than the $29.92 average hourly rate when Biden took office in January 2021.

Biden touted his success with managing the U.S. economy in a statement:

“With today’s report of 256,000 new jobs in December, we have created over 16.6 million jobs over the course of my administration and this is the only administration in history to have created jobs every single month. Although I inherited the worst economic crisis in decades with unemployment above 6% when I took office, we’ve had the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years with unemployment at 4.1% as I leave. Although forecasts were projecting it would take years to achieve a full recovery, we have had the strongest growth and employment creation of any advanced country, brought inflation back down, and achieved the soft landing that few thought was possible.”

Ultimately, the report will be the benchmark to determine the success of Trump’s soon-to-be second term in office.

It’s the second time Trump is inheriting a robust economy.

When Trump took office in 2017, he was handed a 4.7% unemployment rate from President Barack Obama. By the time Trump left office, the unemployment rate had risen to 6.4%, which Biden had to contend with.

Trump, for his part, won a second term in office by trashing the economy and promising to lower the price of goods. However, he has since backtracked on that promise after the election.

“Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard,” Trump said in a December interview with Time when discussing the cost of grocery prices.

What’s more, while Trump has promised to bring prices down, his policies are expected to do the exact opposite. Experts say Trump’s plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods could cause inflation to skyrocket and send the economy into a tailspin.

FOR-PROFIT US HEALTH SYSTEM CONTINUES TO LEAVE MANY MILLIONS UNINSURED EVERY YEAR. More than 10 million workers in the U.S. who held full-time jobs in 2023 still lacked health insurance for the entire year, Eloise Goldsmith noted at CommonDreams.org (11/10).

That’s just one of the troubling findings from a report released Jan. 10 that fleshes out how America’s “patchwork” system of employer-provided plans, individually purchased coverage through state-level exchanges, and Medicaid, are leaving many millions of Americans without care year after year.

The new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) looked at the demographic characteristics of the uninsured population from 2018 through 2023 using Census Bureau data and found lack of healthcare coverage along class, racial, and ethnic lines, as well as disparities when it comes to levels of educational attainment.

“The Affordable Care Act has delivered insurance coverage for millions of Americans, but there are still considerable gaps in coverage—particularly for workers who find themselves too young for Medicare and who earn wages above thresholds for Medicaid coverage,” said Emma Curchin, one of the authors of the paper and a research assistant at CEPR.

“These gaps leave millions of people—many of them working full time all year—unable to secure insurance coverage. With so many unsettling questions about the future of key social safety net programs, policymakers must focus on solutions for delivering consistent insurance coverage to everyone,” she added.

After it passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act—which sought to expand health insurance coverage, including by creating nex exchanges in the for-profit market—was able to reduce the share of the U.S. population that was without health insurance by roughly half between 2009 and 2023. While 16.7% of the population lacked insurance in 2009, the latest available data shows 8% of the population is without insurance. But even with the ACA, the study found that more than 27 million U.S. residents are without insurance, and almost 16 million of those workers have full-time jobs, part-time jobs, or are unemployed but actively seeking work.

BIDEN LEAVES OFFICE LESS POPULAR THAN TRUMP. Americans were giving President Joe Biden harsh reviews as he prepared to leave office Jan. 20. And worse than that, they appear to be judging him even more harshly than his two most recent predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Alex Samuels noted at Daily Kos (11/10).

According to a survey released Jan. 10 by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just one-quarter of U.S. adults (25%) said Biden was a “good” or “great” president, compared with Trump, whom 36% of U.S. adults gave the same ranking after his first term in office ended, in 2021. (Notably, though, Trump had slightly higher “poor” and “terrible” ratings than Biden.)

Even more remarkable is that the survey about Trump was conducted shortly after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And this is backed up by other polling as well. For instance, between Jan. 7-20, 2021, Trump’s approval ratings dropped from 42% to 39%, according to 538’s average. But at present, Biden’s job approval ratings sit at about 37%, according to 538’s average.

November’s election, where Trump got close to earning a majority of the popular vote against Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris, showed voters preferred a return to Trump vs. a continuation of Democratic rule. But now we have even more verification of the degree to which voters, after seeing both men govern, simply (if slightly) prefer Trump to Biden.

According to a national tracking poll by Civiqs, just 38% of registered voters have a favorable view of Biden. In fact, he has been below 40% since Nov. 10, making the odds of a rebound ahead of Trump’s inauguration pretty slim. Meanwhile, 45% of voters have a favorable view of Trump, according to Civiqs, and his favorability has been steadily increasing since about February 2023.

These data points starkly illustrate how tarnished Biden’s legacy has become, despite an impressive domestic record. Not only did he pass landmark legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, to help combat climate change, but Trump is also inheriting a strong economy from Biden.

The issue? Polling suggests voters either don’t know this or believe Biden was insufficient in other ways. The AP-NORC survey found only 2 in 10 Americans (22%) think Biden made good on his campaign promises. A larger share, 38%, said Biden did not keep his word. The remaining 39% said he tried but failed to keep his campaign promises.

Biden is also faring considerably worse than Obama was at the end of his presidency. AP-NORC found Obama left his second term in office with a majority of Americans (52%) describing his tenure as “good” or “great.” This squares with data released in early January by Gallup, which found Biden’s standing is similar to that of former President Richard Nixon, who resigned amid the infamous Watergate scandal. (Unlike the AP-NORC survey, Gallup’s involved a retrospective assessment of past presidents, not a contemporaneous one.)

CRITICS SAY TRUMP GOT ‘NOTHING RIGHT’ ABOUT CAUSES OF L.A. WILDFIRES. Progressive critics were left shaking their heads this week as Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA allies absurdly blamed the Los Angeles County wildfires on everything from an ichthyophile governor to diversity policies—while ignoring what experts say is the true cause of the deadly infernos, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams.org (11/9).

On Jan. 8, Trump took to his Truth social media platform to falsely accuse Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom—whom he repeatedly called “Newscum”—of refusing “to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water... to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”

Newsom’s office responded to Trump’s accusation by correctly noting that “there is no such document as the water restoration declaration.”

Trump also accused Newsom of wanting “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water,” a red herring and false statement given that the state’s plan to protect the endangered delta smelt actually involved increasing the amount of fresh water flowing into its habitat.

Jeffrey Mount, a water policy expert at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, told MSNBC newsletter editor Ryan Teague Beckwith on Thursday that Trump got “nothing right” in his post.

Summarizing his interview with Mount, Teague Beckwith wrote:

Without getting into too much detail, here’s what did happen ... During Trump’s first term, his administration sought to divert some of the water coming into a river delta near San Francisco to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, among others. They came up with a plan for the water, which Newsom challenged in court. The Biden administration later negotiated a new plan with California on how to divvy up the water.

This is basic stuff, so the fact that Trump describes this as Newsom refusing to sign some kind of document that never existed should give you a sense of how disengaged he is with his own policy.

Meanwhile, MAGA acolyte and soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency co-leader Elon Musk used his X social media network—formerly Twitter—to amplify racist posts disparaging Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, an antisemitic diatribe by defamatory conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, implicitly sexist and homophobic attacks on Los Angeles’ fire chief, and his own frequent aspersions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

Slate web editor Nitish Pahwa condemned MAGA’s “conflagration of lies and disinformation.”

“Just one day after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would no longer be fact-checking informational posts, and mere months after nonstop online hoaxes obstructed federal efforts to assist North Carolinians in the recovery from Hurricane Helene, we’re getting an early-year preview of how the United States is going to experience and respond to these rampaging climate disasters throughout the near future,” Pahwa said.

“In the vacuum left by mainstream TV networks that did not at all mention climate change in their fire coverage, bad-faith digital actors swooped in with their own takes,” Pahwa added. “Climate change doesn’t just boost record weather events—it boosts the snake-oil salesmen, too.”

Climate experts and defenders weighed in with science-based explanations for the increase in extreme weather events like the Los Angeles County wildfires.

As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, Aaron Regunberg, Public Citizen’s Climate Program senior policy counsel, noted that “a recent study found that nearly all of the observed increase in wildfire-burned area in California over the past half-century is attributable to anthropogenic climate change.”

“This devastation is the direct result of Big Oil’s conduct,” Regunberg asserted.

As Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said, “This is exactly the sort of disaster that Exxon’s own scientists predicted more than 50 years ago, but they spent billions to keep us hooked on fossil fuels.”

According to the U.S. National Park Service, the area burned annually by California wildfires has increased fivefold since the 1970s.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2025

Populist.com