Never has there been a more shining example that Trump has no concern for the safety and well-being of Americans than over the last 24 hours. Nothing he has uttered since the government shut down indicates that he sees this moment as anything other than an opportunity to inflict more pain on Americans he perceives to be his enemy, i.e. over half of the population.
He has been convinced that this is his best opportunity to take Democrats off the political chessboard, but his handlers have, I believe, made a huge miscalculation. Trump is so drunk on power that he’s not thinking straight. His favourability ratings before the shutdown were already poor, but his net approval rating yesterday plummeted to -10.3 after the release of a series of polls. Pew Research has him at -18; the net favorability number is raised by an outlier Morning Consult poll that puts him at -6, with all the rest in double digits.
The Silver Bulletin by Nate Silver notes:
The percentage of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump is also higher than ever. Yesterday, it broke 44 percent in our average for the first time in Trump’s second term. It’s down to a slightly lower (but still higher than usual) 43.5 percent today.
Trump believes he’s untouchable, and that is leading him to make mistakes. What he fails to realise, is that he’s just Vought, Miller and Thiel’s useful idiot. They ultimately don’t mind if they have to throw him under the bus eventually; they just want to have broken the system so much by then that Democrats will find it impossible to stop them. Over the coming days, Dems will quietly be beside themselves with fear that they made the wrong move. That’s a natural reaction if you care about the consequences of your actions. They were right to do what they did, and it’s up to people like me to shout it from the mountaintops. While things may get worse before they improve, I believe ultimately Democrats will prevail. However, they must not, under any circumstances, give ground in this vitally important struggle that will set a precedent for the upcoming midterms.
Right now, they are being exposed to a tsunami of lies about them seeking to provide healthcare for ‘illegal aliens.’ This is the central plank of the MAGA narrative. It’s the best-organised, best-crafted blizzard of lies and disinformation I have ever seen from Republicans and tragically, Democrats are ill-equipped when it comes to countering the messaging—a problem they urgently need to resolve.
The facts could not be clearer. There are conditions in which an undocumented immigrant might present to an emergency room and be entitled to care under legislation signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1986.:
‘The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labour Act (EMTALA) provides that any individual who presents to a covered hospital’s emergency department and requests examination or treatment will be provided an appropriate medical screening examination to determine if an emergency medical condition exists. If an emergency medical condition is found to exist.’
The patient’s rights are clear and well-documented. This is not a Democrat wishlist item; it’s the law. It’s also the right thing to do. Are Republicans suggesting that a wagon comes around to each hospital each day, screaming, ‘Bring out your dead illegal aliens’? Then there’s a small matter of the Hippocratic oath.
JD Vance deliberately made a claim he knew to be false. Here’s what his false statement read:
“Very often somebody who’s there in the emergency room waiting is an illegal alien, very often a person who can’t even speak English,” he said. “Why do those people get health care benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?”
Firstly, there is no evidence to support the claim that there is an epidemic of so-called illegal aliens flooding emergency rooms. He did, of course, throw a couple of triggers in there for good measure, ‘illegal alien’ and ‘can’t even speak English’—clearly, a political red meat offering for his base.
Interestingly, Karolyin’ Leavitt, when asked if emergency rooms should establish the patient’s immigration status before treatment is given, said, and I quote,
“That’s probably not a question for me to answer. I think that’s a question for healthcare professionals and legal experts,” [She went on], “I don’t speak for emergency rooms across the country. I speak for the President of the United States.”
The correct answer was ‘Of course not’, but the Press Secretary for the President of the United States can’t answer a fundamental humanity question. I think we know what the answer is, but that would clearly be illegal under the 1986 Act.
That aside, EMTALA was passed as an unfunded mandate, meaning the federal government requires hospitals to provide a service but does not allocate specific funds to cover the cost of that service. ANY hospital accepting Medicaid must provide care as specified in the ACT. This has nothing to do with Biden; it’s a matter of law. What Biden did provide was guidance after the Dobbs decision relating to the ER treatment of pregnant women requiring emergency treatment, which may require an abortion procedure. It is this guidance that Trump rolled back, not funding.
If you would like to read a deeper dive into the claims and counterclaims, read this report by Alan Jaffe and Lori Robertson at factcheck.org. Remember, the whole purpose of the Republican disinformation blizzard is to muddy the water so you can’t focus on the truth, which is that Democrats are NOT attempting to provide funding to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants.
The sole purpose of their action is to ensure that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits do not expire at the end of this year, thereby preventing substantial insurance premium hikes for 20 million Americans. In addition, they want to ensure that immigrants in the country LEGALLY continue to qualify for ACA coverage. I’ll let AOC explain:
I think Bernie Sanders also encapsulated the situation perfectly when he stated:
“This government shut down is all about whether Republicans will get away with raising health care premiums by 75% for 20 million Americans and throwing 15 million people off their health care.”
Democrats need to turn their attention to Russell Vought. Trump is painting him as the Grim Reaper set to gut federal jobs further. Democrats must paint this as an act of vengeful retribution for having the audacity to defend the healthcare of millions of Americans. They can with confidence say that Americans are once again about to be punished because Trump can’t get his own way. As I stated at the beginning of this piece, I intend to take a day out tomorrow to create some short video clips to drive home the key messaging points. I’ll pay to make them, but if you’d like to contribute to these and more videos that will be needed to drive messaging home, consider becoming a paid subscriber. As they say, every little helps.
Dems have grasped this opportunity to resist with both hands, and they need our support to win this critical fight. To date, they have been dismissed by Trump, who views them as little more than an inconvenience. This is a clear opportunity to draw a line in the sand and prove to the Democratic base that they are up for a fight, which is what people have been waiting to hear. It’s imperative that they DO NOT cave or give ground, because they are in a much stronger position than the MAGA narrative would have them believe.
It’s time to paint this for what it is. It is a hostage situation, and Trump is quite prepared to shoot the hostages. Rest assured, I am more than capable of creating a visual representation of this picture over the weekend. Vought is the weak link. Trump claimed that he knew nothing about Project 2025, yet he is quoting in his own Truth Social posts to lay out his path to retribution.
Be in no doubt, Vought would dismantle government altogether, given the chance and run everything through his office and the White House; that’s how much of a lunatic this man is. This is Trump’s idea of a game of chicken, and make no mistake, he is really good at it, but this time, I believe he has overplayed his hand. Let’s not forget, this was not only about the shutdown, but it was also about Epstein and his friends' sexual abuse and rape of children, which Trump is desperate to suppress, not to mention the non-publication of the job numbers. He believes, as he did with COVID, that if you don’t go looking for problems, they don’t exist.
I firmly believe the administration is over its skis on this one and I think if Democrats play this right it will put a boost in their step. The longer Trump keeps the government shutdown, the more pressure he places on an economy already under stress. It will put Trump further underwater on the economy, while also shouldering the blame for the shutdown. This brings me back to my advocacy for economic disengagement (spending strike). It’s all about applying pressure at the weak point, because this clown is running a circus where the tent could collapse at any moment.
From No mercy/No malice
By Professor Galloway
Strike | No Mercy / No Malice
We frame economic power as a contest between capital and labor, but the real star of the American economy is consumer spending, which accounts for 68% of GDP. The Great Recession saw a 3.4% drop in consumer spending — at the time, the most severe year-over-year decline since World War II. The U.S. economy registered a 9.8% drop in consumer spending during the second quarter of 2020, when Covid shut down the world as we knew it. In both instances the U.S. government responded aggressively, spending hundreds of billions, primarily on bailouts, to pull us out of the Great Recession, and trillions, primarily in direct aid, to get us through the pandemic. The lesson? When consumers stop spending, American leaders start listening. As Geo Hussar explained to his YouTube followers at the end of September, “this is not seizing the means of production, but seizing the means of consumption,” adding that if every American dropped their consumption, on average, by 2%, “that would be the most loud and potent form of protest.”
It's been exhausting trying to find real people who actually believe that better is possible and are willing to work towards it. I've seen this all coming for years now and it's maddening that our supposed leaders let it happen. I still believe we have to take back control from the money interests, and that we really need to a new constitution and to rebuild the federal government. It's most of what I've written about on here.
Few people seem willing to dream of a radically different, better world. Everyone's so disillusioned it feels like, and those who aren't are divided by race, gender, class, religion, or something else that prevents us from working together the way we have to.
I'm struggling a lot with depression right now anyways, and it's getting harder every day to feel like making a change is possible.