New Medicaid rules published

As this notes the intent is clearly to kick as many people with serious health issues off of Medicaid as possible. They can die in agony for all that the Trumpers care.

Frail. That’s a word that a lot of people use to describe people like me who use wheelchairs.

That’s not a word that I would apply to myself. It sounds like I’m made of delicate glass or something, and if the wind blows the wrong way, I’ll fall to pieces. And that just ain’t me.

But the day is coming when all sorts of people may be scrambling to dig up any bit of evidence they can to support their claim that they are frail—because they have to in order to be exempted from the federal government’s Medicaid work requirements.

On June 3, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published an Interim Final Rule in the Federal Register that spells out the specifics of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act…

Under the new regulations, according to KFF Health News, “having a medical condition alone isn’t sufficient to exempt someone from the work requirements. States must assess ‘the severity of an individual’s condition’ to determine whether they can stay on Medicaid without working—a standard that makes it more difficult for enrollees to meet the criteria.” - The Progressive

Of course Trump is politicizing disaster aid

I suppose one could argue that red states’ need is vastly greater, as their governance is so incompetent and corrupt. But that’s clearly not what this is about.

Lawmakers are condemning President Donald Trump for politicizing disaster aid after he denied Democratic-led Rhode Island’s request for blizzard recovery assistance last week while approving millions in funds for Republican-leaning states.

In a series of Truth Social posts on June 30, Trump announced more than $846 million in disaster aid to states that voted for him in the 2024 presidential election. Such aid — granted in response to several extreme weather-related disasters, including wildfires, severe storms, and flooding — is generally approved by presidents and administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on a nonpartisan basis.

According to an Urban Institute analysis examining disaster aid approvals since Trump began his second term in office, over 84 percent of requests from states that voted for him in the 2024 election have received approvals, while only 41 percent of requests from states that voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris have been approved. Red states also appear to receive approvals twice as fast as blue states do, the analysis found. - Truthout

New bill would worsen exploitation of migrant farmworkers

I don’t know whether this would have much chance of getting through the Senate. But it’s worth knowing about.

House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) introduced a bill (June 30) that would transform the country’s agricultural guestworker program, allowing migrants to work year-round on H-2A visas while significantly lowering costs for farmers and wages for workers.

The bill, called the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026 (SAWA), writes into law several changes the Trump administration has already made through agency rulemaking. But it also goes further to make it easier for farmers to hire workers under the H-2A program...

“It’s a wish list for H-2A employers on the backs of workers,” said Diego Lopez, director of government affairs for the United Farm Workers Foundation (UFW).

Lopez said the bill will effectively lower wages for farmworkers twice, by changing how the government calculates something called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) and by allowing farms to charge workers for housing. - Civil Eats

Right-wing Americans have worse health outcomes

But it’s more complicated than you might think, given that the disparity started to show only fairly recently.

“Public health disparities provide an important lens for understanding social and political change in the USA,” a recent study in the journal Nature concludes. “Using individual-level medical data and death records, this study shows that conservative Americans experienced worsening health and higher mortality than liberals during the 2010s.”

…Liberals and conservatives had roughly equal health outcomes as recently as the early 2010s. But by the mid-to-late 2010s, researchers saw a “substantial” divide emerge with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and strokes. COVID didn’t create the phenomenon. It just made it impossible to ignore…

The authors identify two possible causes for the recent disparity. First, less healthy people have increasingly found their way into the conservative side of the aisle. That makes sense, given how the right responded when former first lady Michelle Obama suggested that maybe children should eat a vegetable now and then. You’ll pry their Arby’s from their cold, dead hands. Literally.

But that’s only half the story. The other half is even more disturbing: Conservative politics itself may now be a health risk.

The authors frame political belief as a possible “social determinant of health,” alongside things like income, education, geography, and access to care. In plain English: Your politics may now help predict whether you get treated, whether you listen to your doctor, whether you trust medicine, and ultimately whether you live longer. - Daily Kos

Most US workers just aren’t into it

Just working for the weekend. For those who get one.

In the U.S., only about 30% of part-time and full-time employees say they are engaged at work, according to an annual Gallup survey. That’s the lowest level in more than a decade.

Determining whether an employee is engaged boils down to a single question: Does the work matter to the person doing it? Engaged employees are invested in the outcome of their work. Disengaged ones have stopped caring…

And I believe that when more than two-thirds of the workforce is checked out, it’s evidence of a widespread leadership failure. - The Conversation

SNAP taken from 776,000 kids and counting

Trumpers are f*ckng proud of this.

As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people…

But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children. - ProPublica

Corporations shamelessly buy exemption from taxes

This is far from startling to anyone who has been paying attention.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that at least 88 of the nation’s largest corporations paid zero federal corporate income tax in fiscal year 2025, despite reporting a combined $105 billion in US pretax income.

The federal income tax for corporations is 21%, meaning that these 88 companies collectively avoided $22.1 billion in taxes for FY 2025. On top of that, they collected $4.7 billion in tax rebates, bringing their total tax breaks to about $26.7 billion…

Using data from OpenSecrets, which compiles and publishes campaign finance and lobbying data, we found that from the 2020 election cycle through the 2024 cycle, these 88 companies have spent nearly $852 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. - Public Citizen