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Warren, ‘Every Single American Needs to Know’ Trump’s GOP Is to Blame

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A healthcare worker turns on an operating light in the emergency operation room in the labor and delivery unit at the medical complex in Hondo, Texas on February 26, 2025. (Photo: Kaylee Greenlee for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“When thousands more people die from not getting care, we know who to blame,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday that the American public “needs to know” that the blame will lie squarely at the feet of President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers if and when hospitals across the country are forced to shut their doors due to the unprecedented Medicaid cuts included in the new budget law.

“Every single American needs to know what Donald Trump and Republicans did in the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,'” Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media, referring to the budget reconciliation package that the president signed late last week.

“When hospitals close their doors, we know who to blame,” Warren continued. “When thousands more people die from not getting care, we know who to blame. When kids go hungry, we know who to blame.”

The nation’s rural hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicaid reimbursements, are expected to bear the brunt of the pain from the Republican law, which includes more than $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts as well as destructive changes to federal nutrition assistance and other programs. Nursing homes, community health centers, Planned Parenthood clinics, and other facilities are also at risk, and states are now scrambling to prevent catastrophe.

An analysis published by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform prior to passage of the GOP legislation estimated that more than 700 rural hospitals across the U.S. are at risk of closing due to “serious financial problems.”

“Republicans will try to ignore the devastation their disastrous reconciliation bill will cause. We won’t.”

The health policy organization KFF notes that federal Medicaid spending in rural areas is projected to fall by $155 billion under the GOP law over the next decade—an amount that far exceeds the $50 billion that Republicans allocated to a “Rural Health Transformation Program” over the next five years.

Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, warned in a statement following the Senate’s passage of the legislation earlier this month that the bill would “limit access to care for all rural patients by ending healthcare coverage for rural residents nationwide and putting financial strain on rural facilities who care for them.”

Already, as Common Dreams reported last week, a healthcare clinic in rural Nebraska has announced it is shutting its doors in part due to the expected impacts of the GOP Medicaid cuts. The closure is predicted to be the first of many.

A recent analysis by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill warned that more than 330 rural hospitals are at risk of closing or reducing services due to the Trump-GOP assault on Medicaid.

Over the weekend, Trump administration officials defended the budget law in talk show appearances by attempting to downplay its impact on Medicaid and other healthcare programs.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday that he believes “nobody is gonna lose their insurance”—a claim that dramatically conflicts with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that around 17 million people will lose health coverage under the Trump-GOP law.

“He is only off by 17,000,000,” quipped Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) in response to Hassett’s comments.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote over the weekend that “Republicans will try to ignore the devastation their disastrous reconciliation bill will cause.”

“We won’t,” Sanders added. “We’re going to make them explain what happens when 16 million lose their healthcare and nursing homes and hospitals are forced to shut down or limit services.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Power-mad climate science denying Neo-Fascist orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Continue ReadingWarren, ‘Every Single American Needs to Know’ Trump’s GOP Is to Blame

‘Indefensible’: Trump Budget Law Subsidizes Private Jet Owners While Taking Healthcare From Millions

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Private jets were seen on the tarmac at Friedman Memorial Airport ahead of a business conference on July 5, 2022 in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

A provision of the budget law that President Donald Trump signed last week will leave taxpayers to “pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers.”

The Republican budget measure that U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law late last week contains a provision that analysts say will allow private jet owners to write off the full cost of their aircraft in the first year of purchase, a boon to the ultra-rich that comes as millions of people are set to lose healthcare under the same legislation.

FlyUSA, a private aviation provider, gushed in a blog post that with final passage of the unpopular budget reconciliation package, “business jet ownership has never looked more fiscally attractive or more fun to explain to your accountant.”

The law, crafted by congressional Republicans and approved with only GOP support, permanently restores a major corporate tax break known as 100% bonus depreciation, which allows businesses to deduct the costs of certain assets in the first year of purchase rather than writing them off over time.

Forbes noted that the bonus depreciation policy “applies to a slew of qualified, physical business expenses which depreciate over time, such as machinery and company cars, but the policy is often associated with big-ticket luxury items, such as private aircraft, and its institution last decade led to a boom in jet sales.”

“Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class.”

Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, called bonus depreciation “a massive tax break for billionaires and centi-millionaires that use the most polluting form of transportation on the planet.”

“A corporation purchasing a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire $50 million from their taxes in the year of the purchase, rather than spreading the deduction over many years,” Collins wrote. “This amounts to a massive taxpayer subsidy, as ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers.”

“Subsidizing more private jets on a warming planet is reckless and indefensible,” he added.

The National Business Aviation Association, a lobbying group for the private aviation industry, celebrated passage of the Republican legislation, specifically welcoming the bonus depreciation policy as “effective for incentivizing aircraft purchase.” (The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy argues that “depreciation tax breaks have never been shown to encourage more capital investment.”)

Meanwhile, communities across the United States are bracing for the law’s deep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, which are expected to impose damaging strains on state budgets and strip food benefits and health coverage from millions of low-income Americans.

“Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “This is certainly one of the cruelest bills in American history, backtracking on the country’s painfully slow history of expanding healthcare coverage and, equally remarkably, taking food away from the hungry.”

“That’s a lot of needless suffering just to make the richest Americans richer,” he added.

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Continue Reading‘Indefensible’: Trump Budget Law Subsidizes Private Jet Owners While Taking Healthcare From Millions

2% Wealth Tax on Just 3,000 Billionaires Could Raise $250 Billion a Year: Nobel Economists

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Protesters hold placards, including one featuring French businessman and CEO of LVMH Bernard Arnault (C), during a protest in front of the Senate in Paris on June 12, 2025. (Photo: Emma da Silva/AFP via Getty Images

“Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible.”

Seven Nobel laureates on Monday published an op-ed advocating for “a minimum tax for the ultrarich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth,” in the French newspaper Le Monde.

“They have never been so wealthy and yet contribute very little to the public coffers: From Bernard Arnault to Elon Musk, billionaires have significantly lower tax rates than the average taxpayer,” wrote Daron Acemoglu, George Akerlof, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz.

Citing pioneering research from the E.U. Tax Observatory, the renowned economists noted that “ultrawealthy individuals pay around 0% to 0.6% of their wealth in income tax. In a country like the United States, their effective tax rate is around 0.6%, while in a country like France, it is closer to 0.1%.”

Although the “ultrawealthy can easily structure their wealth to avoid income tax, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of tax justice,” the strategies for doing so differ by region, the experts detailed. Europeans often use family holding companies that are banned in the United States, “which explains why the wealthy are more heavily taxed there than in Europe—though some have still managed to find workarounds.”

The good news is that “there is no inevitability here. Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible,” argued the economists, who say that taxing the overall wealth of the ultrarich, not just income, is the key.

The wealth tax approach, they wrote, “is effective because it targets all forms of tax optimization, whatever their nature. It is targeted, as it applies only to the wealthiest taxpayers, and only to those among them who engage in tax avoidance.”

💡 "One of the most promising avenues is to introduce a minimum tax for the ultra-rich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth."Seven Nobel laureates in economics advocate for the Zucman tax in their latest op-ed.Read the full @lemonde.fr article 👇www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl…

— EU Tax Observatory (@taxobservatory.bsky.social) 2025-07-07T12:05:20.611Z

The anticipated impact would be significant. As the op-ed highlights: “Globally, a 2% minimum tax on billionaire wealth would generate about $250 billion in tax revenue—from just 3,000 individuals. In Europe, around $50 billion could be raised. And by extending this minimum rate to individuals with wealth over $100 million, these sums would increase significantly.”

That’s according to a June 2024 report that French economist and E.U. Tax Observatory director Gabriel Zucman prepared for the Group of 20’s Brazilian presidency—which was followed by G20 leaders’ November commitment to taxing the rich and last month’s related proposal from the governments of Brazil, South Africa, and Spain.

“The international movement is underway,” the economists declared Monday, also pointing to recent developments on the “Zucman tax” in France. The French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—but the Senate rejected the measure last month.

The economists urged the European country to keep working at it, writing that “at a time of ballooning public deficits and exploding extreme wealth, the French government must seize the initiative approved by the National Assembly. There is no reason to wait for an international agreement to be finalized—on the contrary, France should lead by example, as it has done in the past,” when it was the first country to introduce a value-added tax (VAT).

“As for the risk of tax exile, the bill passed by the National Assembly provides that taxpayers would remain subject to the minimum tax for five years after leaving the country,” they wrote. “The government could go further and propose extending this period to 10 years, which would likely reduce the risk of expatriation even more.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Donald Trump warns against following the Onaquietday.org blog, says that he's heard that she's a witch with a black cat and a dangerous kitchen.
Donald Trump warns against following the Onaquietday.org blog, says that he’s heard that she’s a witch with a black cat and a dangerous kitchen.

Continue Reading2% Wealth Tax on Just 3,000 Billionaires Could Raise $250 Billion a Year: Nobel Economists

Report Shows How Deadly Texas Floods Were Driven by Human-Induced Climate Crisis

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Vehicles sit submerged as a search and rescue worker looks through debris for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding on July 6, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. (Photo: Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

“Very exceptional meteorological conditions” preceded the Texas floods, climate scientists have found.

A new report from a trio of prominent climate researchers has concluded that the devastating floods that hit central Texas over the last three days were made significantly worse due to the impacts of human-induced climate change.

A study published on Monday by ClimaMeter found that the floods in Texas were caused by “very exceptional meteorological conditions” that cannot be explained merely by natural variability.

The authors—Davide Faranda of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in France, Mireia Ginesta of the University of Oxford in the U.K., and Tommaso Alberti of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Italy—contend that the meteorological conditions present at the start of the Texas floods on July 4 “were characterized by slightly negative surface pressure anomalies over Central Texas, with values ranging up to –2 hPa, indicating the presence of a weak low-pressure system over the region.” They also found that “temperatures were significantly below the climatological average for this time of year, with anomalies reaching –5°C across much of the area affected by the flooding.”

The researchers then compared how extreme weather events that occurred under meteorological conditions similar to those present during this week’s floods would have manifested had they occurred in the years from 1950 until 1986, a three-decade period during where human-induced climate change had yet to cause a global surface temperature spike. They concluded that the meteorological conditions ahead of the deadly Texas floods this year were up to 7% wetter than those that had proceeded past floods in the region.

The ClimaMeter study adds heft to statements made by climate scientists over the weekend who argued that there was no question that human-induced climate change—which is driven largely by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels—had tipped the floods into historic disaster territory.

“The tragic events in Texas are exactly what we would expect in our hotter, climate-changed, world,” said Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London. “There has been an explosion in extreme weather in recent years, including more devastating flash floods caused by slow-moving, wetter, storms, that dump exceptional amounts of rain over small areas across a short time.”

As of this writing, at least 80 people have been confirmed dead as a result of the Texas floods while dozens more people have been reported as missing. The Washington Post reports that data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System shows that Kerr County, Texas didn’t send out an Amber Alert-style push message to local residents until Sunday, two days after the floods overwhelmed the area’s rivers and creeks.

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Power-mad climate science denying Neo-Fascist orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.

Continue ReadingReport Shows How Deadly Texas Floods Were Driven by Human-Induced Climate Crisis

‘These Deaths Are on Trump’s Hands’: Texas Flooding Spotlights Assault on Climate Science

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Kerrville residents document the aftermath of deadly flooding at Louise Hays Park near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas on July 6, 2025.
 (Photo: Jorge Salgado/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The Trump regime is gutting scientific research into climate and atmospheric science for political reasons, at the very time we need a much better understanding of it,” said one environmentalist. “This is so reckless and dangerous.”

Deadly flooding caused by torrential rain in central Texas late last week called attention to U.S. President Donald Trump’s full-scale assault on the climate research and monitoring agencies tasked with studying and predicting such weather catastrophes, as well as his ongoing attacks on disaster preparedness and relief.

Though local National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters did issue warnings in the lead-up to Friday’s flooding—which killed at least 82 people, including dozens of children—key roles were reportedly vacant ahead of the downpour, prompting scrutiny of the Trump administration’s mass firings and budget cuts, in addition to years of neglect and failures by Republicans at the state level.

Asked whether he believes the federal government should hire back terminated meteorologists in the wake of the Texas flooding, Trump responded in the negative and falsely claimed that “very talented people” at NWS “didn’t see” the disaster coming.

“This is an absolute lie,” replied meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus. “Worse, this is the person responsible for making those kids less safe and he’s trying to deny the damage he caused.”

Holthaus wrote Sunday that Trump’s staffing cuts “have particularly hit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Environmental Modeling Center, which aims to improve the skill of these types of difficult forecasts.”

“Though it’s unclear to what extent staffing shortages across the NWS complicated the advance notice that local officials had of an impending flooding disaster,” he added, “it’s clear that this was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent.”

“Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis.”

Under the guise of “government efficiency,” the Trump administration has taken an axe to staff at federal climate agencies and is trying to go even further with its budget for the coming fiscal year. The Washington Post noted Sunday that “a budget document the Trump administration recently submitted to Congress calls for zeroing out climate research funding for 2026, something officials had hinted at in previous proposals but is now in lawmakers’ hands.”

“But even just the specter of President Donald Trump’s budget proposals has prompted scientists to limit research activities in advance of further cuts,” the Post noted. “Trump’s efforts to freeze climate research spending and slash the government’s scientific workforce have for months prompted warnings of rippling consequences in years ahead. For many climate scientists, the consequences are already here.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump has dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who were working on the National Climate Assessment, moved to slash NOAA’s workforce, and announced a halt to climate disaster tracking, among other changes—all while working to accelerate fossil fuel extraction and use that is supercharging extreme weather events. One NOAA veteran warned that Trump’s cuts could drag the agency back to “the technical and proficiency levels we had in the 1950s.”

“The Trump regime is gutting scientific research into climate and atmospheric science for political reasons, at the very time we need a much better understanding of it,” environmentalist Stephen Barlow wrote on social media on Sunday. “This is so reckless and dangerous, which is why I suggest we call these tragedies Trump events.”

Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said over the weekend that “Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis.”

“These deaths are on Trump’s hands,” she added.

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.

Continue Reading‘These Deaths Are on Trump’s Hands’: Texas Flooding Spotlights Assault on Climate Science