Bulletin Board: A Running Tally of Posts From Other Sources

Bulletin Board: A Running Tally of Posts From Other Sources

GovernmentNEW: Heather Cox Richardson, August 19, 2026 There is also the uncomfortable fact that the national debt passed a record $40 trillion yesterday, much sooner than expected. The U.S. is currently spending more than a trillion dollars a year to pay interest on the national debt, more than it spends on defense. In 2025, Trump said he would balance the federal budget, but in fact, thanks largely to his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the deficit is growing. … The national debt relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is about to break the record set during World War II. … He promised to bring the cost of gasoline below $2 a gallon; it is now above $4 a gallon. Heather Cox Richardson, August 16, 2026 When officials at George Pullman’s Palace Car Company outside of Chicago cut wages five times without lowering rents in company housing and then fired members of an arbitration committee, workers went on strike. By July 1894 the nation’s transportation system had ground to a halt, and the federal government sent troops to Chicago, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, California, Utah Territory, and New Mexico Territory. Clashes destroyed $250,000 in property. As Democrats tried to revise the tariff and replace missing revenue with an income tax, Republicans insisted they were socialists. … William Jennings Bryan, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, stood firmly for the people. “There are two ideas of government,” he said. “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up and through every class which rests upon them.” Republicans flooded the country with speakers and pamphlets charging Democrats with trying to instigate “class warfare” and saying Bryan was a “demagogue” who hoped to create a “red welter of lawlessness as fantastic and as vicious as the dream of a European communist.” He was planning to change the government of the people, for the people, and by the people into “a government of a mob, by the demagogue, for the shiftless and the disorderly and the criminal and the semi-criminal.” Testing testosterone for military troops (The Guardian) Originalism Violence Misogny in Politics (Judith Levine, June 12) Tracking ICE agent shootings (The Trace) Teenage shooters with Nazi idolatry (The Trace) Racism & BullyingA Manufactured Crisis: Minnesota Medicaid Fraud, an Unprecedented ICE Crackdown, and a National Medicaid Rollback (Politics Chicks) The fraud was real. The crisis built on top of it was manufactured: selective enforcement, a historic ICE operation, and Medicaid cuts converging in one state. Medicaid Cuts Specific to California and Minnesota: “Just Cruel” (The Guardian) Hard Data and Context Are Missing in Minnesota’s Fraud Furor (MinnPost) Racism June 26, 2026, Heather Cox Richardson Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), the third-ranking Republican in the House, made the white nationalism of the Republican Party clear. He said: “Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re gonna call us a racist, you’re gonna call us an Islamophobe…. You know what? I would argue that I never did care, but I’m done being careful, even the least bit careful…. [Somalis] don’t assimilate. And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.” Eco Health July 29, 2026, Heather Cox Richardson More than 100 times Fauci did exactly that as Republicans berated him, calling him “a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar,” mocking him, and asking him, “Do you feel like you’re in deep sh*t?” What Republicans did not do is introduce any evidence that the 85-year-old lifelong public servant had broken any laws. More to the point was Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) yelling at Fauci about closings during the pandemic, blustering: “Who the f*ck do you think you were?” F-bombs are rare on the Senate floor, and the outburst has gotten significant media attention. That attention has distracted from the other reason Moreno is in the news. As Abby Vesoulis of Mother Jones reported, Moreno has said nothing as his daughter’s ex-husband, Representative Max Miller (R-OH), has been credibly charged with the violent abuse of her and their 2-year-old daughter. As the Republicans struggle to hold on to their congressional majorities, Republican leaders have refused to call for Miller, who is running for a third term, to resign. LGBTQ+