More Trump anti-immigrant viciousness

This is also another way of trying to demonize immigrants in the public mind.

The Trump administration finalized a new “public charge” rule set to take effect (June 25) that gives immigration officers broader authority to deny permanent residency to immigrants lawfully present in the country who have used certain public programs, such as Medicaid, food, or housing assistance…

Under the outgoing policy, established in 2022 by the Biden administration, immigration officers could only consider whether green card applicants had used cash assistance or had gotten nursing home care through Medicaid.

By removing that concrete language, the finalized rule opens the green card review process to arbitrary denials and political bias. It also allows DHS to reject green card applications based on obesity or any other personal characteristic the administration elects to consider.

A similar Trump public charge regulation, implemented in 2019, was ruled illegal by a federal court and struck down. While that rule’s technical application was limited to a small number of lawfully present immigrants applying for green cards, its chilling effect was far broader, leading millions of immigrants and their family members to avoid seeking assistance and care they were legally eligible to receive. - CIPC

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

Trump has wrecked local food/small farm initiatives

This administration is a pitiful failure in every conceivable way.

In March 2020, as pandemic lockdowns began, Americans accustomed to the most abundant, available food supply in history encountered empty shelves in supermarkets. With international supply chains scrambled, the narrative around “local food” shifted from “yuppie pipe dream” to “food security necessity.”

…While the (Biden) administration did little to upend the structure of the dominant commodity agriculture system, officials started listening to farmers and advocates that operate outside of it. They talked about the need for not just efficiency, but also redundancy and resilience, in case of another crisis.

In collaboration with lawmakers in Congress pushing through huge pandemic relief packages, Biden’s USDA then made historically large investments in new programs intended to support small farms and local food systems…

“The last administration was making a concerted effort to try to level the playing field to some extent for those smaller farmers, and a lot of farms and local food systems ramped up in response to that influx of funding,” said Farm Aid’s Tremblay. So, when things changed, many had already made investments they couldn’t simply cancel. Now, they’re stuck. - Civil Eats

Insane desperation while trying to save Big Coal

Coal is an enemy of humanity. That's a simple statement of fact.

Almost all coal-fired power plants in the US had the ability to comply with rules limiting their emission of dangerous pollutants such as mercury that can cause brain damage in children. Despite this, Donald Trump’s administration decided to demolish the standards anyway.

Last week, the Trump administration said it is loosening restrictions on air toxins from mercury, lead and other heavy metals that are released by coal plants. Such pollution is known to be neurotoxic and has been linked to irreversible brain damage in children and infants, as well as heart disease and cancer in adults…

However, the EPA’s own previous analysis shows that only 27 coal plants across the US, out of around 219 total coal facilities, would have to adopt any sort of technological upgrade, such as filters in their smokestacks, to meet the stronger standards. - The Guardian

A big fat under-the-radar nuclear energy scam

The Trumpers' efforts to promote nuclear are every bit as bad as what they're doing to try to keep coal alive.

On (October 28), the White House announced an $80 billion deal with Westinghouse to finance construction of eight large new reactors in the U.S. There is not enough in the way of actual details about the deal, resulting in even more unanswered questions. But the promise of a large, direct investment in a pack of new reactors has predictably revved up talk of yet another “Nuclear Renaissance” and made it look like the DJT 2.0 administration is making good on big nuclear power goals from a group of executive orders issued in May.

$80 billion sure sounds like a lot! And the news that the announced $80 billion is going to come from Japanese taxpayers and not U.S. taxpayers sounds like a sweet deal!

…But $80 billion is only enough to build, at most, four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. That’s because the cost of building nuclear reactors is four to 10 times more than wind, solar, or geothermal power. Even wind and solar paired with battery storage are still several times cheaper than new nuclear reactors.

But where would the other $80+ billion for eight reactors come from? U.S. taxpayers? Ratepayers? In this case, probably taxpayers. The reactors would probably receive low-interest loans from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) loan guarantee program, and, following construction, they would be eligible to claim the Clean Energy Investment Tax Credit, which provides a 30-50% subsidy for the cost of a new energy project. That would mean $80 billion or more in loans up front, and, later, $48-80 billion in rebates from U.S. taxpayers. - NIRS

The EPA is being gutted even worse than you think

This is of course being underreported in corporate media because its owners are loving it.

Combining EPA data on staffing changes with conservative estimates of the pending cuts, the initiative has calculated that 25% of EPA staff are already out of the agency.

That calculation does not include other announced cuts, including a third round of deferred resignations taking effect at the end of September 2025 and December 2025. Those cuts may see the departure of similar numbers of full-time equivalents as in the past two rounds – approximately 500 and 1,500.

The agency has also reportedly planned to be cutting as much as two-thirds of research staff.

With those departure figures included, the initiative estimates that approximately 33% of staffers at the agency when Trump took office will be gone by the end of 2025. That would leave, at the start of 2026, an EPA staff numbering approximately 9,700 people, a level not seen since the last years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. - The Conversation

USFS firefighting is badly understaffed

It’s not all DOGE’s fault, but some of it is.

More than one-quarter of United States Forest Service (USFS) firefighting positions are vacant, creating shortages as extreme conditions lead to wildfires across the country, internal data reviewed by The Guardian has revealed…

“The agency saying it is ‘fully staffed’ is dangerous,” a squad leader who is familiar with the data said. “Maxing out 19-year-olds with no qualifications isn’t the best strategy.”

…In recent years, the USFS has had a hard time recruiting and retaining qualified firefighters due to low pay and increasing job hazards. The agency lost almost half its permanent employees from 2021 to 2024.

The issue has been exacerbated by the Trump administration, which has slashed budgets and reduced support staff. - EcoWatch

Research cuts would hurt everyone, sooner or later

Even those who support such cuts, largely due to their own fear of real intelligence and scientific knowledge, will pay a price.

Large cuts to government-funded research and development can endanger American innovation – and the vital productivity gains it supports.

The Trump administration has already canceled at least US$1.8 billion in research grants previously awarded by the National Institutes of Health, which supports biomedical and health research. Its preliminary budget request for the 2026 fiscal year proposed slashing federal funding for scientific and health research, cutting the NIH budget by another $18 billion – nearly a 40% reduction. The National Science Foundation, which funds much of the basic scientific research conducted at universities, would see its budget slashed by $5 billion – cutting it by more than half.

Research and development spending might strike you as an unnecessary expense for the government. Perhaps you see it as something universities or private companies should instead be paying for themselves. But as research I’ve conducted shows, if the government were to abandon its long-standing practice of investing in R&D, it would significantly slow the pace of U.S. innovation and economic growth. - The Conversation

Of course Trump & Co. have no problem with people going hungry

So far it doesn't look like they're going to back down on this.

The Agriculture Department (USDA) is restricting key flexibility in SNAP (food stamps) that the President and Congress gave states in the Families First Act of March to help them manage an applications influx due to COVID-19 and the recession — saying states must return to “normal operations,” even though current circumstances are anything but normal.

SNAP responded quickly, as it’s designed to do, to the sharp rise in unemployment and food insecurity, especially among households with children. Caseloads jumped by more than 6 million people or about 17 percent nationally between February and May, as household incomes fell precipitously. SNAP could manage this unprecedented increase largely because Families First allowed USDA to let states temporarily change their SNAP procedures to make it easier for people to receive food assistance while state SNAP agencies operate remotely.

...as COVID-19 hot spots continue to flare up and some areas that began reopening reverse course, individual states continue to see rising need for SNAP. States that may have hoped the crush of SNAP applications was temporary are now planning for a long period of increased need while facing budget shortfalls and long-term economic uncertainty. - Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Trumpers plan more VA privatization

Overtly, it's being claimed that the Veterans Administration, especially its health care system, won’t be privatized. The reality is that back-door crap is already underway.

Last June, President Donald Trump signed a landmark law on veterans’ health care after months of tense negotiations. At the ceremony in the Rose Garden, Trump said the bill would deliver on his campaign promise to let veterans see private doctors instead of using the Department of Veterans Affairs’ government-run health service: “I’m going to sign legislation that will make veterans’ choice permanent,” he said.

Standing behind him, the leaders of major veterans groups looked around uncomfortably. What Trump called “choice” these veterans groups called “privatization,” and they’d been warning for years that it would cost taxpayers more money and deliver worse care for veterans. The veterans groups had endorsed the bill, but Trump’s description of it was not what they thought they were there to support.

The moment left no doubt that the Trump administration is determined to use the new law to expand the private sector’s role in veterans’ health care. The administration is working on a plan to shift millions more veterans to private doctors and is aiming to unveil the proposal during Trump’s State of Union address in January, according to four people briefed on the proposal. - ProPublica