TRUMP REGIME

Time -  Kennedy’s nomination to run HHS would put him in a position to directly influence policies around food regulation, nutrition standards, and federal dietary guidelines. Jerold Mande, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) senior adviser and deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture under two Democratic presidents, says there’s “remarkable, strong bipartisan concern about ultra-processed food.”

[Robert] Kennedy’s nomination to run HHS would put him in a position to directly influence policies around food regulation, nutrition standards, and federal dietary guidelines. Jerold Mande, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) senior adviser and deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture under two Democratic presidents, says there’s “remarkable, strong bipartisan concern about ultra-processed food.”

As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would oversee the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has the authority to regulate food safety and nutrition labels. One of the most significant tools Kennedy would have at his disposal, according to Mande, is HHS’ involvement in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a document that shapes federal nutrition advice. The guidelines, updated every five years, inform public health messaging as well as food assistance programs and government food purchasing. The process is political, with each administration shaping the guidelines according to its priorities. “It’s like the phases of the moon,” Mande says of the HHS role. “It's at its peak in terms of power right now. It's highly unusual that dietary guidelines would straddle two administrations like this where work would begin in one but be completed in the other.”

pendent, UK -  President-elect Donald Trump’s team is considering the possibility of withholding massive research grants from “woke” schools they claim lack academic freedom. Trump’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and economist at Stanford, reportedly wants to target so called “cancel culture” at a number of top progressive universities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Those with knowledge of Bhattacharya’s thinking told the newspaper that he’s considering linking the doling out of billions in federal research grants to a measure of “academic freedom” on campuses and punishing those that apparently don’t adequately embrace perspectives championed by conservatives. 

Occupy Democrats  - The Congressional Budget Office sounds a five-alarm warning that if Republicans allow the Affordable Care Act's extended subsidies to expire at the end of 2025 millions of Americans will become uninsured. And that's not all... The bombshell report also found that premiums will spike drastically if the ACA subsidies expire. The CBO stated that "not extending the credit will increase the number of people without health insurance and raise the average gross benchmark premiums for plans purchased through the marketplaces." The life-saving tax subsidies were implemented by President Biden in 2021 under the historic American Rescue Plan Act — and were then extended through 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act. The tax credits have successfully lowered out-of-pocket costs for consumers. "Without a permanent extension, CBO estimates, the number of uninsured people will rise by 2.2 million in 2026, by 3.7 million in 2027, and by 3.8 million, on average, in each year over the 2026-2034 period," the report said. It also projected a rise in 4.3% in gross benchmark premiums in 2026 if the subsidies expire with a rise of an average 7.9% between 2026 and 2034. Of course, Republicans don't care about the financial suffering of average Americans. Their entire political party exists to funnel more money to the rich and corporations. We must take a stand against their greed. Please retweet and  to demand that the subsidies be extended — and consider joining the growing exodus to Tribel, a new pro-democracy social network that is exploding in popularity because Twitter and Facebook are trying to stop its growth — which is only making Tribel grow even faster. 

Who’s Who on Kash Patel’s Crazy Enemies List 

The American Prospect -The TV doctor’s scams and fake cures are the least of what makes him so dangerous as Trump’s appointee to head Medicare and Medicaid. During the campaign, Trump and his surrogates went out of their way to claim that they had no plans to cut Medicare.

But they do have plans to destroy Medicare by stealth. They’ll do this by changing the rules.

A key part of that strategy is to expand the private Medicare Advantage program and push more and more Medicare recipients into it, leading to a death spiral of traditional public Medicare. The details are spelled out in the Project 2025 blueprint.

Despite Trump’s denials of any knowledge of Project 2025, one of its prime authors, Russell Vought, is Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike several of Trump’s cabinet clowns, Vought is all too competent. More on that in a moment.

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a big booster of that strategy—and now, Trump’s appointee to head Medicare and Medicaid. On his now-defunct TV show, The Dr. Oz Show, he repeatedly touted Medicare Advantage. Disclosures later showed, during his failed campaign for a Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2022, that Oz owned $600,000 of stock in two of the largest Medicare Advantage sponsors, UnitedHealth Group and CVS/Aetna. Oz has not gotten as much attention as Trump’s clownishly unqualified cabinet appointees such as RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. He has gotten some negative attention for other conflicts of interest in his use of his TV show to promote quack remedies in which he had a financial interest. But that pales alongside the damage that he could do to Medicare. The only good thing about the Oz nomination to head the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is that the confirmation hearings will give senators a chance to shine a spotlight on the scheme to destroy public Medicare. How Trump’s FBI pick went from public defender to provocateur