Democrat Politics

A cartoon by Pedro Molina.

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It was 2020, when in a summer election, Oklahoma voters narrowly approved Medicaid expansion—a key component of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. 

Rural Oklahoma led the opposition, with the chair of the opposition saying at the time, “Results are clear: A plan that claims to ‘save rural health care’ was overwhelmingly rejected by rural communities across Oklahoma. … Voters in more than 90% of Oklahoma counties voted against [the Medicaid expansion ballot measure].”

Among the initiative’s fiercest critics was Gov. Kevin Stitt, who fear-mongered that Medicaid expansion would mean cutting education, roads, and other state spending. He claimed it would create chaos in the budget, predicting outright catastrophe: “We already have a budget deficit. It’s going to come from cuts in other state agencies or tax increases. I’m not going to vote for a tax increase.”

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Fast forward to today. 

“As U.S House Republicans mull over budget cuts, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said the proposed slash to Medicaid dollars would impact state funds, rural hospitals, and health care service providers,” reported The Oklahoman. 

Oh, so Obamacare was good for rural health care, despite rural Oklahoma voting overwhelmingly against it? 

Oh, so Obamacare didn’t bankrupt the state or lead to higher taxes or cuts in education and other government services? 

Oh, so Obamacare was a good thing, and Oklahomans voted in favor of its Medicaid expansion in the exact same year they voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. Well, an even larger majority of Oklahomans also voted for Trump in 2024, even after his renewed promise to kill the Affordable Care Act: 

Kristen Welker, NBC News: You said during the campaign you have concepts of a plan. Do you have an actual plan at this point for health care?

Trump: Yes. We have concepts of a plan that would be better.

Welker: Still just concepts? Do you have a fully developed plan?

Trump: Let me explain. We have the biggest health care companies looking at it. We have doctors. We’re always looking because Obamacare stinks. It’s lousy. There are better answers. If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else, and I’d do something about it.

The reality is that Oklahoma’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act did not—and does not—stink.

“The latest data from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority reveal that 1,038,625 Oklahomans are enrolled in SoonerCare, the state’s Medicaid program. That’s about a quarter of the state’s population. Over half of enrollees are children,” reported The Oklahoman. “In 2021, 54.5% of births were covered by SoonerCare, according to OHCA data. Of SoonerCare enrollees, 70.2% are under the federal poverty line.”

Trump and the Republican Party don’t care about any of those people. Stitt didn’t either, and he fought hard to prevent Medicaid expansions in his state. Then he campaigned hard for Trump. 

And now that Republicans are ready to give Stitt what he wanted—the death of Medicaid expansion—now he’s gonna be all “Woah, woah, let’s not be so hasty!” Screw that guy. 

Oklahomans who voted for this, including parents of the children on the program, it really is time to start rethinking your allegiances.

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A cartoon by Clay Jones.

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Elon Musk’s social media platform crashed on Monday, but it’s definitely not Elon Musk’s fault.

Users of X reported a global outage throughout the day, via DownDetector, and Musk confirmed that the site continued to have issues throughout the afternoon—but he won’t be taking responsibility.

The billionaire claimed that the low connectivity was caused by a “massive cyberattack” allegedly orchestrated by a “large, coordinated group and/or a country,” and that the company is “tracing” the so-called attack.

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …” he wrote.

And his conspiracies didn’t stop there.

“They want to silence you and this platform,” one user wrote. 

“Yes,” Musk replied.

A screenshot of X during the global outage

The social media platform Bluesky, which many users switched to after Musk bought Twitter and endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, also experienced an outage on Monday, according to DownDetector. 

Musk has a history of blaming cyberattacks for technical issues that were likely just the consequence of his own inefficiency. In 2022 and 2023, he bought X (formerly Twitter) and gutted the site’s top engineers. 

And he made similar claims in August 2024 during a Trump campaign event that was delayed 45 minutes due to connection problems, which Musk blamed on the “probability” of an attack before admitting his technical failures.

“We also had some unforced errors ourselves. But good work by the X team fending off the attacks and fixing our mistakes! All’s well that ends well,” he added.

Whether or not X was actually the target of a large-scale cyberattack, the platform’s ongoing instability suggests a more widespread issue: Musk’s inept leadership.

His SpaceX rocket launch epically failed on Thursday, with the Starship rocket blowing up. He’s also losing billions in SpaceX contracts as investors run for the hills. 

Meanwhile, Musk’s Tesla stock dropped a staggering 15% by Monday afternoon—the lowest drop in the company’s history. This comes after sweeping reports that current and potential customers are souring on the brand due to Musk’s federal government takeover, which resulted in the gutting of agencies and the firing of hundreds of thousands of workers, including veterans. 

Anti-Musk protests have erupted outside of Tesla dealerships nationwide, and Tesla owners have been expressing their buyer’s remorse with bumper stickers, like one that says, “We bought this car before we knew.”

As Musk scrambles to control the narrative around X’s latest outage, he’s chosen to continue his pattern of deflecting blame onto made-up external threats. But his failure to acknowledge his ongoing mismanagement is becoming increasingly difficult for the public to ignore.

Trump calls himself a king. But we know we are not a nation of kings—and we never will be. Get your Daily Kos T-shirt or hat to spread the message and wear it with pride: No Kings.

On Monday, President Donald Trump bragged about taking steps to deport Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, saying the Columbia University graduate student who organized anti-Israel protests last year is “the first arrest of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply. Thank you!”

Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on Saturday, who said they were taking him into custody because the State Department had revoked his student visa. However, Khalil is a legal permanent resident with a green card who had not been charged with any crimes before his arrest. 

Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024.

After his arrest, the Department of Homeland Security said that Khalil led “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization” and that he will now be deported because that violates an executive order Trump signed on Jan. 30 that says the Trump administration will “deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas.” 

“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a post on X.

In an appearance on Fox Business on Monday, Trump border czar Tom Homan defended Khalil’s deportation, and said the United States can deport legal permanent residents.

“Absolutely we can,” Homan said. “Did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency here? Committing crimes, attacking Israeli students, locking down buildings, destroying property, absolutely. Any resident alien who commits a crime is eligible for deportation.”

But Khalil wasn’t arrested for any of those aforementioned crimes.

Arresting and deporting someone over speech that does not align with the administration’s policies is a terrifying slippery slope. Today it’s Palestinian activists, but next it could be anyone who criticizes Trump or Republicans.

“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” the American Civil Liberties Union, which defends the right to free speech in the United States, said in a statement on Monday. “The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: The First Amendment protects everyone in the U.S. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate. The government must immediately return Mr. Khalil to New York, release him back to his family, and reverse course on this discriminatory policy.”

Even anti-immigration right-wing activists have said they take issue with Khalil’s arrest and deportation for that reason.

“There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?” bigoted right-wing activist Ann Coulter wrote in a post on X.

Ultimately, the move is one of many free speech crackdowns Trump and the Republican Party have taken since he was sworn in on Jan. 20. Trump has targeted law firms who have either defended Democratic officials or sued Trump.

On Thursday, he signed an executive order that revoked security clearances of lawyers at the law firm Perkins Coie and barred them from federal government buildings “when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States.” In the order, Trump attacked Perkins Coie for “representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” and for defending Fusion GPS which he said “manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election.”

“This is dangerous as hell,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told the Wall Street Journal of Trump’s attacks on law firms. “If you defend other people’s rights, even if it’s your job, the president of the United States will retaliate against you.” 

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) received a letter from the Department of Justice in February demanding he “clarify” comments he made calling co-President Elon Musk a “dick.”

“This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk—an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a “dick”—and government staff who work for him. Their concerns have led to this inquiry,” Ed Martin, interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in the letter. 

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, is escorted out as Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, on March 4, 2025.

“So if you criticize Elon Musk, Trump’s DOJ will send you this letter,” Garcia wrote on Bluesky. “Members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration. I will not be silenced.”

Martin also threatened Georgetown University Law School, saying that if the school continues to teach classes related to diversity, equity, and inclusion that his office would not hire students from the school. 

And House Republicans censured Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green for saying during Trump’s joint address to Congress on March 4 that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid. Republicans are also threatening to remove Green from his House committee assignments over his protest.

With all these moves, fascism is no longer a threat: It’s here, and it’s terrifying. 

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Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has long been subjected to racist attacks from Republican lawmakers and is not afraid to call out the MAGA movement’s blatant xenophobia—even when CNN anchors try to downplay it.

Omar, a Somali-American who was the first African refugee elected to Congress in 2018 as well as one of the first two Muslim women in the chamber, appeared on the news network Monday, where she was asked to respond to bigoted attacks from Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas. Gill sent out a fundraising email that included a petition calling for Omar to be deported because she advised immigrants in her district on their legal rights if questioned by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers.

“I mean, again, you know, these are people who have really stopped caring about our institutions, really stopped caring about our Constitution,” said Omar, who has been a U.S. citizen since 2000. “I know that it is red meat for his base that are xenophobic and racist, to say to them that I am going to find a way to arrest and deport a member of Congress.”

CNN host Pam Brown then chimed in with some knee-jerk language policing. 

“Just to be clear,” Brown asked. “You’re not calling his—all his base, xenophobic and racist, right?”

But Omar did not walk her words back.

“Well, I mean, he is leading to something,” Omar answered. “He has a petition out. He’s getting donations. That’s what this is all about. He knows he can’t deport me, there is no grounds for my arrest. So this information is only being put out there by him for a reason, and that reason is because he has a base that feeds off of that.”

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Gill’s lie-filled fundraising email stated, “Recently, it came out that Ilhan Omar is hosting free workshops for Somalians, who are in our country illegally, on how to evade ICE and deportation.” Gill accused the congresswoman of being “more loyal to illegal Somalians than she is to the United States, the office she was elected to.”

Omar is an African woman who wears a hijab, and her GOP foes have eagerly “othered” her as an immigrant. While Omar is now a citizen, Somali refugees have temporary protected status in the United States, which means they aren’t here “illegally,” as Gill claims. But racist Congress members and their MAGA voters don’t care about that distinction. 

Like many other craven and opportunistic Republicans, Gill has been publicly kissing Trump’s ass, which culminated in his introduction of a measure to replace Benjamin Franklin’s face on the $100 bill with none other than the orange führer’s mug.

The GOP’s attacks on women of color aren’t a new phenomenon. Less than one month ago, Trump’s anti-immigrant border czar, Tom Homan, said he wanted the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York for similar efforts to educate immigrants about their rights.

In gooselockstep, House Republicans are using their majority to hold committee hearings and attack and pressure local municipalities unwilling to give the president’s deportation thugs free reign over their cities and citizens.  

Brown’s attempt to minimize Omar’s words is par for the course these days, as traditional media outlets including CNN attempt to evade Trump’s fascist wrath. Omar, who has spent much of her career being asked inherently flawed questions about bigotry, did an excellent job of handling another round of dishonest media scrutiny.

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The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy under the guise that it infringes upon the First Amendment.

Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor and practicing Christian, filed the petition just days after President Donald Trump won the 2024 election.

Conversion therapy is a discredited practice designed to convert people in the LGBTQ+ community to heterosexual or cisgender, and it has been criticized as dangerous and even deadly. More than 20 states have laws banning conversion therapy, though there is not a federal law banning the practice. 

Chiles, who is being represented by conservative Christian advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, argues that it is her right to practice conversion therapy with underage clients who share her “Christian worldview.”

“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” ADF President Kristen Waggoner said in a statement.

“Significantly, the law only prohibits counseling conversations in one direction,” the statement continued. “For example, it allows counseling conversations that aim to steer young people toward a gender identity different than their sex but prohibits conversations that aim to help them return to comfort with their sex when they desire that.”

ADF’s argument seems to echo the ongoing Supreme Court Case U.S. vs. Skrmetti, which challenges Tennessee’s ban of gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. The court is slated to make a decision in the case by July. 

And in a similar vein, Trump signed an executive order shortly after taking office halting federal funding for medical professionals who provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 19. This order continues to be tied up in court after a judge extended a block in early March.

The Supreme Court has previously turned away challenges to conversion therapy bans, like in 2023 when it struck down a similar challenge to Washington’s ban. But at the time, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority opinion, writing that they would have granted a review. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh also indicated that he would have allowed a review, writing that “this petition asks us to consider whether Washington can censor counselors who help minors accept their biological sex. Because this question has divided the courts of appeals and strikes at the heart of the First Amendment, I would grant review.”

It seems like the Supreme Court’s conservative bench is finally getting what it wanted.

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Amazon announced on Monday that it will begin streaming old episodes of “The Apprentice,” the reality competition show that helped President Donald Trump sell himself as a national figure before becoming a politician.

This move is the latest in a series of pro-Trump decisions by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who has recently pivoted his companies and personal wealth to benefit Trump and the Republican Party.

“I look forward to watching this show myself—such great memories, and so much fun, but most importantly, it was a learning experience for all of us!” Trump said in a press release.

After years of Trump business failures—including a shuttered casino, airline, and steak company—“The Apprentice” created a mythological image of Trump as a successful businessman while also making him millions, allowing him an escape from his financial quagmire.

The decision to stream the show now, and likely provide a financial pipeline to the president, highlights the growing relationship between Bezos and Trump.

As the announcement broke, longtime Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus announced that she is leaving the paper in response to Bezos’ recent decision to pivot the opinion section to the right.

“Jeff’s announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable,” she wrote in her resignation letter.

Marcus had been with the paper for more than four decades. 

Jeff Bezos stands by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and DOGE bro Elon Musk at President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Similarly, according to NPR, more than 75,000 of the Post’s digital subscribers canceled their subscriptions after Bezos announced in February that it would no longer publish pieces from across the ideological spectrum.

Marcus told NPR that Will Lewis, opinion editor of the Post, had spiked a column of hers because it dissented from “Jeff’s edict.”

And at Bezos’ behest, the Post also spiked an endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election.

Other financial ties to Trump include Amazon’s $40 million deal to produce a Melania Trump documentary and Bezos’ personal contribution to Trump’s inauguration, which he attended in January.

Bezos—along with DOGE bro Elon Musk and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg—is among the most prominent of the wealthy media and tech oligarchs offering up their services to Trump in the last few months … even as Trump claims to fight for the middle class.

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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.

Hey, DOGE! Look no further than Trump for waste to cut

Cutting Trump’s golfing budget alone would probably avert a government shutdown.

Elon Musk already tanked Tesla, and SpaceX could be next

Even if he runs it into the ground, he’ll still have money to burn.

Trump dodges recession talk as global markets plunge

Let the flip-flopping continue.

House GOP’s new plan to stop a shutdown will cause a world of hurt

It might fund the government, but it certainly won’t help families.

Cartoon: Greetings, citizen!

It’s a perfect example of AI being used for evil.

Musk and Rubio play nice on X after White House spat makes headlines

#FakeNews.

As shutdown looms, fringe Republican won’t let go of punishing Democrat

The pettiness is the point.

John Oliver exposes the dirty secret behind ICE detentions

It’s never good when your institution is compared to slavery.

Click here to see more cartoons.

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As a measles case hits the Washington, D.C., area, public health agencies led by anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr. are ignoring it and instead wasting resources on testing vaccines for a false and long-debunked association with autism.

A measles outbreak in West Texas began in January, but on Sunday, a case was confirmed in Maryland, with the possibility of further exposure to people at Dulles International Airport and the Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center. (The two outbreaks are not believed to be connected.) And officials are still trying to identify who has been exposed, according to The Washington Post.

However, it’s clear we’re not in the safest of hands, at least federally. During President Donald Trump’s Cabinet meeting on Feb. 26, Kennedy claimed the outbreak in Texas and New Mexico was “not unusual”—despite that it has led to the first two deaths from the preventable disease in a decade. Additionally, there have been more than 200 reported cases and 23 hospitalizations due to largely unvaccinated populations, as of March 7.

“There’ve been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year, there were 16,” Kennedy said, pushing a false narrative of public health normalcy. “So it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

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Instead of focusing on the growing outbreak, Kennedy, a rabid anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, is using taxpayer dollars to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct needless trials on a disproven link between vaccines and autism. To the chagrin of “crunchy” pseudoscience advocates, numerous studies found no link between vaccines leading to autism.

That hasn’t stopped Trump’s public health goons from continuing to parrot junk-science talking points.

“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement to ABC News. 

It’s unclear how the study would be conducted, who would take part in it, and how it would be different from numerous previous studies of the same topic.

Public health experts are denouncing the decision. Others are afraid of the impact Kennedy is already having on waning public health trust. 

A sign is seen outside of Seminole Hospital District offering measles testing on Feb. 21, 2025, in Seminole, Texas.

“The announcement that CDC will look at potential links between vaccines and autism means that significant federal resources will be diverted from crucial areas of study, including research into the unknown causes of autism, at a time when research funding is already facing deep cuts,” said Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America.

“[Kennedy’s] misleading and often conspiratorial claims have already weakened confidence in public health, a legacy that could have far-reaching and deadly consequences both domestically and globally,” Y. Tony Yang, an associate dean of health policy at George Washington University School of Nursing, wrote in The Lancet. “It is not just the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer; unvaccinated infants, immunocompromised individuals, and entire communities are at risk.”

Kennedy has already axed the multimillion-dollar effort to study an oral COVID-19 vaccine, and had the Food and Drug Administration cancel a meeting to plan for next season’s flu shot. When he isn’t gutting public health agencies or offering workers $25,000 to resign, he’s having the department whiplash his employees by begging them to come back.

As measles spreads, the Trump administration is wasting resources on debunked conspiracies instead of protecting public health—a dangerous gamble with real consequences.

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