Democrat Politics

New disclosures from Republican lawmakers reveal concerns within the party that voters may punish the GOP if proposed cuts to health care in the Donald Trump-backed “One Big, Beautiful Bill” become law. The measure, which squeaked through the House without any Democratic support late last month, is currently under consideration in the Senate.

Politico reported on Wednesday that House Speaker Mike Johnson is telling Senate Republican leadership that he fears the party could lose its razor-thin majority if further cuts to Medicaid are added.

The outlet reports that Senate Majority Leader John Thune is “under immense pressure to water down the Medicaid provisions the Senate GOP is counting on for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings.”

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has also been sounding the alarm for his party.

The Hill reported that Tillis told Thune that the proposed cuts could lead to Republicans losing the House and the Senate. A source who witnessed the discussion told the outlet that Tillis discussed how the GOP proposal would cut services in his home state and told Thune, “this will be devastating to my state.”

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina speaks during a confirmation hearing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 29.

Tillis is up for reelection in 2026 and is one of the Republican Party’s most vulnerable Senate candidates. He won his 2020 race by less than 2 percentage points, and while Trump won North Carolina in 2024, the state has been decided by less than 4 percentage points in the past five presidential elections.

Additional pressure is being exerted on Republicans from within by a group of over a dozen House Republicans. The members, who hold vulnerable seats, sent a letter to Thune and Johnson on Tuesday, saying they wouldn’t back a revised bill that included more health care cuts.

Thune’s predecessor in Senate leadership, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is also trying to prevent his party from getting more bad headlines over health care. After it was reported that McConnell said in a private meeting that voters would “get over it,” referring to the cuts, his spokesperson tried to claim his comments referred to people purportedly abusing Medicaid benefits.

Republicans have been trying to convince the public that the proposed cuts will not affect the public at large, but this is false. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 16 million would lose care under the bill. 

Even though public opinion polls show Americans opposed to the bill’s provisions, Trump is already planning a victory party to celebrate the bill’s passage. The party’s congressional campaign committee also plans to attack Democrats for voting against it.

Democratic leaders like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have been lambasting Republicans over the bill, with an emphasis on the massive impact it will have on day-to-day life for millions.

xMore than 16 million people will lose their health care under Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

That’s enough people to fill Fenway Park 424 times.— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) 2025-06-25T18:09:55.286Z

Trump has a lot riding on the legislative success of the bill.

In his first term, two of his most humiliating moments came after the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his inability to pass an infrastructure bill (though former President Joe Biden passed one). Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the 2017 tax cut, failed to stimulate the economy.

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A cartoon by Jack Ohman.

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Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to federal charges alleging that she assaulted and obstructed immigration officers during a tense oversight visit to a detention center in her state last month.

“I just left out of court and pleaded not guilty—because I’m not guilty, and we will fight this. At the end of the day, this is all about political intimidation. The Trump administration and his colleagues or cronies or whatever you want to call them have weaponized the federal government. They’ve weaponized the Department of Justice,” she told reporters outside of a Newark courthouse.

McIver, who was elected to a full term in November 2024 after winning a special election two months earlier, said that she views the prosecution as political retribution aimed at silencing dissent against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“They will not intimidate me. They will not stop me from doing my job,” she said.

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The charges stem from McIver’s May 9 visit to Delaney Hall, a privately operated, 1,000-bed Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. The complaint—brought by interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, a Republican and Trump appointee—includes three counts: two with a maximum sentence of up to eight years and one with a sentence of up to one year.

U.S. District Judge Jamel Semper has scheduled her trial for November 10.

The indictment is notable—a rare criminal case against a sitting member of Congress that does not involve corruption or financial crimes. It’s also the latest flashpoint in Trump’s escalating conflict with Democrats over his immigration policy.

During the same visit to Delaney Hall, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge that was later dropped. He’s now suing Habba, alleging “malicious prosecution.”

Officers push Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California out of a Homeland Security press conference.

Tensions continue to run high. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was recently arrested by federal agents while escorting immigrants from court, and Sen. Alex Padilla of California was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security press conference just days earlier.

Regarding McIver, a video released by DHS shows her inside a chainlink enclosure shortly before Baraka’s arrest outside of the fence. In the footage, she moves through a gate with officers and joins a crowd chanting to surround the mayor.

The scene is chaotic. McIver is caught in a tight knot of protesters and officers in black face coverings. Her elbows seem to brush against one officer, but the footage is inconclusive with regard to whether the contact was deliberate or simply a result of the surrounding commotion.

Still, the complaint claims that she “slammed” her forearm into the officer and tried to restrain him. The indictment, which has sparked backlash from Democrats, also alleges that she wrapped her arms around Baraka to prevent his arrest. 

Democratic lawmakers have called the charges outrageous, with some saying that the prosecution is “congressional intimidation, bullying, and extreme abuse of power.” They point to existing law that gives members of Congress the explicit right to access immigration detention centers without prior notice—a rule codified in a 2019 spending bill. 

McIver has echoed that, saying that she acted fully “in her capacity.”

Whether the charges prevail or not, McIver’s case is shaping up as a political litmus test—one that may reveal how far the Trump administration is willing to go to punish its critics, and how strongly those critics plan to push back.

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For a guy who insists he is totally not a conspiracy-minded anti-vaxxer, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. somehow can’t stop himself from doing conspiracy-minded anti-vaxxer stuff. This time around, it’s his surprise announcement that the United States will be pulling funds from Gavi, an organization that provides vaccines to children in lower-income countries. Wouldn’t want to save poor children from easily preventable diseases now, would we?

Kennedy kept it real classy and announced this major policy change via a prerecorded video to be played for health officials attending Gavi’s pledging summit, where the organization is seeking to raise $9 billion from countries and organizations to fund its efforts to reach 500 million children between 2026 and 2030. Definitely a cool and great time to pop off and say that America is not going to honor the $1.58 billion the Biden administration pledged for Gavi. 

Why is Kennedy pulling money from an organization that has helped vaccinate over 1.1 billion children in 78 low-income countries, preventing over 18 million future deaths? Because Gavi has “ignored the science,” of course. What science? Kennedy never really says. But here’s his very scientific and astute statement about what Gavi has to do.

“I’ll tell you how to start taking vaccine safety seriously: Consider the best science available, even when the science contradicts established paradigms,” he blabbered.

This is nothing but code for a demand that organizations entertain Kennedy’s beliefs that somehow the “real science” about vaccines has been suppressed, particularly his belief that childhood vaccines cause autism. He has insisted that he would approve of a vaccine “if the data is there” and “if you show me the data.” 

Related | RFK Jr. ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory committee

The data has long been available, and it shows that vaccines are rigorously tested and safe to administer. But Kennedy refuses to believe that, so he has to jeopardize efforts to protect children from dying due to easily preventable diseases. 

When Kennedy isn’t busy pulling funding from international vaccine efforts, he’s busy overseeing a flood of misinformation domestically. He fired every member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing actual scientists with a raft of anti-vaxxers. On Tuesday, a report called “Thimerosal as a Vaccine Preservative” appeared on the CDC website in advance of a Thursday presentation to ACIP by Lyn Redwood. Redwood is a former colleague of Kennedy’s at Children’s Health Defense, a rabidly anti-vax group. Thimerosal, a preservative, is a fixation for anti-vaxxers despite having been removed from all childhood vaccines since 2001, and evidence shows there is no harm from the low doses of thimerosal used in vaccines. 

Redwood’s presentation cites a study titled “Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain” by Robert Berman, published in 2008 in the journal Neurotoxicology. Except that Robert Berman himself says that it is not a study he published. He did co-author a piece with a similar name that appeared in a different journal, but that one doesn’t support Redwood’s conclusions either, with Berman saying, “I do not endorse this misrepresentation of the research.”

Perhaps Redwood felt fine about making up studies because she saw the report Kennedy sent to Congress to justify his changes to COVID vaccine recommendations. Kennedy spent the pandemic writing anti-vax books and being a top spreader of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. The problem for Kennedy is that the science doesn’t support him, so the report cited a study under investigation for potential issues with methodology and conflicts of interest, as well as another that has never been peer-reviewed. The report also made claims that were directly refuted by the papers cited. 

Kennedy has been an out and proud anti-vaxxer for years. His brain is filled with nothing but conspiracy theories and whale juice. So it’s not surprising that he would thwart efforts to vaccinate children worldwide—but it’s still awful to see yet another way in which the United States is retreating from the global stage.

Related | Kennedy’s HHS sent Congress ‘junk science’ to defend vaccine changes, experts say

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President Donald Trump’s loyal MAGA influencers have a lot to be fearful of when it comes to Zohran Mamdani’s presumptive Democratic primary win for mayor in New York City on Tuesday. 

From promised rent freezes to city-owned grocery stores, the progressive, Uganda-born candidate is rising in the ranks without the help of massive super PACS like disgraced former New York Gov.  Andrew Cuomo. 

However, it’s not Mamdani’s lack of lawsuits surrounding sexual assault or COVID-19 death cover-ups that have the likes of Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk shaking behind a keyboard. Rather, the two are turning to the tried-and-true Islamophic approaches they know well to attack the 33-year-old making waves across the Big Apple. 

Laura Loomer

For self-proclaimed Islamophobe Loomer, Trump’s shadow tweeted Tuesday that Mamdani “hasn’t even been a US citizen for 10 years. He is literally supported by terrorists.” 

Adding to the insanity, she said, “NYC is about to see 9/11 2.0.”

Loomer wrote in response to a separate tweet, “Muslims destroyed NYC on 9/11 and now a Muslim Communist is about to destroy the entire city for eternity.”

Kirk, whose pastime is arguing with college students to feed his ego, also took to his X account to spew hatred.

“24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11,” he wrote. “Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”

Separately, Kirk tried to defend his comments as “not Islamophobic” because he has “noticed” that “Muslims want to import values into the West that seek to destabilize our civilization.”

“It’s cultural suicide to stay silent,” Kirk insisted.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Of course, it wouldn’t be a MAGA party without Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s input. The QAnon-lover-turned … still unhinged conspiracy theorist posted a jaw dropping AI-generated image of the Statue of Liberty wearing a burqa, the full-body religious garment worn by Muslim women. 

“This hits hard,” the congresswoman captioned the post. 

Mamdani has been getting hits from MAGA influencers and media outlets throughout the race, so the Islamophobic comments are likely not even hitting the winner’s algorithm. Even outlets like The New York Times have been carving out articles doubting the progressive’s ability to win. The editorial board told voters they “do not believe Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.” 

However, as of Tuesday night, the voters of New York City proved the media and massive donors otherwise. 

“In the words of Nelson Mandela: it always seems impossible until it’s done,” Mamdani wrote via X Tuesday night. “My friends, it is done. And you are the ones who did it. I am honored to be your Democratic nominee for the Mayor of New York City.”

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Republicans in Congress aren’t doing much these days, opting to just let President Donald Trump do whatever he wants. That apparently frees them up to spend all their time launching investigations into the mental fitness of former President Joe Biden. And because this ongoing probe is clearly the most urgent issue facing America today, Trump has waived executive privilege for nine Biden aides. This means they will be forced to testify before Congress and answer whatever unhinged questions people like Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. James Comey come up with. 

President Joe Biden continues to live rent-free in Donald Trump’s head.

It’s all part of Trump’s ceaseless and pathetic attempts to undo the Biden presidency. So now there are four congressional investigations into whether Biden is old. The Department of Justice also launched an investigation, at Trump’s demand, to determine whether Biden signed things with an autopen because apparently, if he did, it’s all unconstitutional? It’s not at all clear what the goal is here, save for dragging Biden’s name through the mud to support whatever unhinged conspiracy theories Congress and the DOJ are pursuing. 

Executive privilege ensures that presidents and their advisers can be candid in discussing issues without worrying that those communications will become public. This makes sense, because you do actually want a president and advisers who fully weigh multiple options and engage in frank debate. But it isn’t an absolute privilege. Congress has the power to seek information from the executive branch in the course of investigations, and since congressional Republicans are engaged in a full-court press into Biden’s mental state, they want his aides to appear before them and testify. As with Trump’s autopen theory, it’s not clear what this would achieve. Biden was president for four years, and the things he did during those four years cannot be magicked away by pretending that he wasn’t. 

Related | Democrats walk out of sham GOP hearing into Biden’s ‘mental fitness’

It isn’t that Trump doesn’t have the power to do this. Unlike so many other things he’s doing, presidents do possess the ability to waive an assertion of executive privilege made by a former president. It’s what Biden did when the Jan. 6 committee sought White House communications related to the insurrection, calling it a “unique and extraordinary” circumstance, which, well, yes. Learning how much the president and his advisers participated in the planning of an insurrection is sort of necessary. 

The myriad investigations into Biden, on the other hand, are a nonsense sham. Nevertheless, Trump waived privilege for the Biden aides, saying there are “exceptional circumstances” because they are investigating whether Biden aides “concealed information regarding his fitness … and may have unconstitutionally exercised those powers themselves to aid in their concealment.” 

Come on. 

Unsurprisingly, Trump used to have a much more expansive view of executive privilege. He invoked it to try to prevent Congress from seeing the full Mueller report about Russian interference in the 2016 election. He tried to use it to prevent Congress from questioning former Attorney General William Barr and former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross about the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census. 

Even after losing the 2020 election, Trump kept trying to use executive privilege to shield his wrongdoings. In 2021, he sued the House to stop Congress from accessing White House papers about Trump’s actions and communications around Jan. 6 and to prevent the testimony of his former adviser Steve Bannon. He also claimed executive privilege to get America’s Most Malleable Judge, Aileen Cannon, to indulge his claim and appoint a special master to review the classified documents Trump illegally retained and then hid in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. 

Executive privilege is also the basis for Trump’s refusal to even explain what the Department of Government Efficiency is. In a lawsuit brought by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics about whether DOGE is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, Trump asserted the privilege to say that even asking what kind of entity DOGE is interferes with the separation of powers. It’s a ridiculous argument, but one that the conservative majority at the Supreme Court seems fine with. 

So, to recap: Determining if Joe Biden occasionally mixed up someone’s name or used an autopen is a national security crisis that demands testimony from everyone surrounding Biden. Determining if Donald Trump worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election and his level of involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection is no big deal, and it is unfair of Congress to even ask about it. Call it executive privilege for me, but not for thee.

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Let’s all collectively shed a single tear for billionaire Jeff Bezos and his betrothed Lauren Sanchez, whose dreams of a picture-perfect Italian wedding are crushed. 

Thanks to the protesters who tirelessly took to the streets and canals of Venice, the filthy rich couple have been forced to relocate some of the festivities to a shipyard.

A group named No Space for Bezos successfully strong-armed the Amazon founder out of using the 14th-century Grande Scuola Misericordia, a centrally located venue, by planning to form a blockade in the canals around the event on June 28.

“We won! The protest managed to ruin Bezos’ plans and Mayor Brugnaro’s palace games,” the group said in a post obtained by CNN. “They were forced to flee and take refuge in Tese 91 of the Arsenale. Even Bezos’ two yachts, Koru and Abeona, will not arrive in Venice.”

The locals have been making their displeasure known across the city as the wedding day approaches. Bezos’ bald shiny head even made it onto a massive banner unfurled in St. Mark’s Square reading, “IF YOU CAN RENT VENICE FOR YOUR WEDDING YOU CAN PAY MORE TAX.”

xJeff Bezos pays his staff poverty wages and dodges tax. No wonder he can afford to shut down half of Venice for his wedding this week. Tax billionaires NOW.Location: Piazza San Marco, [email protected] #JeffBezos #TaxTheSuperRich[image or embed]— Everyone Hates Elon (@everyonehateselon.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 3:53 AM

And while the venue change counts as a big win, the lovebirds are still causing havoc for locals and tourists across The Floating City just so they can have some illusion of privacy.

According to Page Six, visitors who booked their dream lodging many months ahead of time are being kicked out of the Aman Venice hotel by Bezos’ team so that the couple can have the place entirely to themselves.

“Guests who had previously booked [at] the hotel for Wednesday night a long time in advance were booted once Bezos rented the entire space a few months ago,” a source told the celebrity gossip page. 

These guests are being forced to pack up all of their belongings and relocate to another hotel so the couple can do whatever they want. And while these visitors are being offered upgrades and comped nights, their displacement is just another out-of-touch move by uberwealthy snobs who throw money at inconveniences—and people—and expect them to go away. 

Once a low-key tech nerd, Bezos has spent the past year flaunting his money and cozying up to Donald Trump, earning him a growing list of critics and enemies. Most people don’t love the concept of ultrarich billionaires who pay hardly any taxes, but it’s an even worse look when those billionaires are also lining the pockets of the president. 

Related | Washington Post loses staff, readers, and money as Bezos bends to Trump

The Amazon founder worth more than $220 billion was among the tech billionaires who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and had a primo VIP seat as Trump took the oath of office. The owner of The Washington Post also broke with tradition and did not let the paper’s editorial board endorse Kamala Harris for president.

And while Bezos hasn’t had a front-and-center seat with the president since attending his inauguration, he has hobnobbed with Trump in plenty of other ways. 

In addition to streaming his buddy’s old reality show “The Apprentice,” Amazon Prime signed a $40 million documentary deal with first lady Melania Trump as well. Of course, all of this is pocket change compared to Bezos’ military contracts with the government. 

His space technology company, Blue Origin, scored a $2.4 billion deal with the U.S. Space Force. 

Back in Venice, guests like Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, and Mick Jagger have already been sighted as the wedding date nears. It’s unclear if the president will take time away from his clumsy diplomacy and warmongering to attend the nuptials of one of his top benefactors. 

As for why the citizens of Venice pushed back so hard on Bezos and Sanchez’s presence, it could be a multitude of reasons. But maybe they’re just tired of entitled, wealthy American men stomping all over their city. 

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A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know.

Serial liar Trump tries to oversell his Iran strikes

The draft dodger is desperate to be a war hero.

Fox News’ racist smears against Zohran Mamdani fail in New York mayoral race

Despite the ugliest smears of Trump’s strongest media ally, Mamdani has a strong chance of becoming mayor.

Forget hurricane season—FEMA funds are going to new prisons

What, were you not expecting disaster aid to go toward building “Alligator Alcatraz?”

The Senate majority runs through moderate America

Purity politics will keep us in the minority.

Cartoon: Warrantless goons

There’s nothing more dangerous to national security than a question.

Bye-bye, Big Balls: Musk’s DOGE protégé leaves government

Were you fired by a teenager called “Big Balls?” You may be entitled to compensation.

House speaker eager to give up even more power to Trump

In the GOP, you either kiss Trump’s ass or get your ass kicked.

Click here to see more cartoons.

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President Donald Trump on Wednesday called reporters “scum” for not parroting his rosy assessment of the air strikes he ordered against Iran last week. Trump has frequently lied on a dizzying array of issues but now appears to believe that his claim that Iran’s nuclear capability has been decimated should be accepted without question.

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Appearing at a NATO meeting at The Hague in the Netherlands, Trump was asked by NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell to address a recently leaked assessment from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency that indicates the strikes did not achieve Trump’s goal.

“Real scum, real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. It should be the opposite, you should make [the pilots] heroes and heroines,” Trump said.

Trump also claimed he got a “call from Missouri” that said the pilots who flew the missions were “devastated” because reporters were “trying to minimize the attack.”

Trump constantly claims that he receives phone calls from unnamed figures that reinforce the falsehoods and narratives that he wants to promote. Those claims are part of his tradition about lying on issue after issue, big and small.

An assessment of the bombing leaked from the Pentagon to CNN indicates that the bombing did not destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program. The report did say that the attack set Iran’s nuclear timeline back a few months.

Trump has argued that the bombing runs “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s facilities, a sentiment echoed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Trump also called the media “scum” on Tuesday when reporting first called into question his proclamation about the success of the strikes.

Related |Election official who called out Trump’s lies refuses to step down

There has yet to be a publicly available, independent assessment of what the bombings accomplished. But what is known is that Trump has a record of serial lying and is the current leader of the Republican Party, which was infamous for lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under former President George W. Bush.

Trump has lied dozens of times about the results of the 2020 election, falsely arguing that he defeated former President Joe Biden, who handily won the election that year. Trump recently lied and claimed that “professional agitators” were behind protests against his attacks on immigrants in Los Angeles. Trump has lied about issues like egg prices, falsely describing price declines under his presidency despite economic data showing otherwise.

Perhaps most infamously, Trump lied for nearly a decade about former President Barack Obama, in the process becoming the most notable figure pushing the racist and thoroughly debunked birther conspiracy that Obama was born abroad and was ineligible for the presidency.

In fact, during his first four-year term in office from 2017 to 2021, the Washington Post catalogued 30,573 lies from Trump.

A person with a track record like that needs far more evidence than just his verbal assurances to sell the world on the result of something as serious as a military strike.

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A cartoon by Clay Jones.

Related |Mass deportations may backfire big time in Florida

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