2bpoliticallycurious

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Could you imagine the outrage if Biden had put his face on huge banners hanging from government buildings?

Or if Biden had sent or threatened to send troops into cities in red states?

And yet, Trump's march towards authoritarianism is going forward unabated, with about 44% of Americans supporting it.

Do his supporters really want to live in an American version of North Korea?

When the U.S. starts to resemble North Korea, you know we're in trouble...

Washington, DC, USA

Pyongyang, North Korea

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And recently we learned that DOGE uploaded all of our Social Security private information onto a cloud server that was not properly secured. What could possibly go wrong?

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This should be fun (for certain values of…)

"The statute bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax," the court said.

The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., addressed the legality of what Trump calls "reciprocal" tariffs imposed as part of his trade war in April, as well as a separate set of tariffs imposed in February against China, Canada and Mexico.

The court's decision does not impact tariffs issued under other legal authority, such as Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

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Bernie Sanders: Kennedy Must Resign

Photo: Mark Peterson for The New York Times

"The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself."

—Bernie Sanders

Once again, Bernie Sanders tells it like it is. Of course, RFK, Jr should resign. He and his anti-science, anti-vaccine beliefs are going to hurt or kill many Americans. This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall. Below are some excerpts.

Opinion | The New York Times | Bernie Sanders | Aug. 30, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.

Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.

This week, Mr. Kennedy pushed out the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after less than one month on the job because she refused to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies. Four leading officials at C.D.C. resigned the same week. One of those officials said Mr. Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” apparently to fit Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. This is not Making America Healthy Again. [emphasis added]

Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts.

It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities.

[See more under the cut.]

The American Academy of Pediatrics... calls immunizations “one of the greatest public health achievements,” which prevents tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases of disease.

The American Medical Association... recently said that vaccines for flu, R.S.V. and Covid-19 are “the best tools to protect the public against these illnesses and their potentially serious complications.” [...] Against the overwhelming body of evidence within the medicine and science, what are Secretary Kennedy’s views? He has claimed that autism is caused by vaccines, despite more than a dozen rigorous scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of children that have found no connection between vaccines and autism.

He has called the Covid-19 vaccines the “deadliest” ever made despite findings cited by the W.H.O. that Covid shots saved over 14 million lives throughout the world in 2021 alone.

He has ridiculously questioned whether the polio vaccine has killed more people than polio itself did even though scientists have found that the vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and prevented around 20 million people from becoming paralyzed since 1988. [...] The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.

What will this mean for the health and well-being of the American people?

Short term, it will be harder for Americans to get lifesaving vaccines. Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs — if they can manage to get a vaccine at all.

Covid is just the beginning. Mr. Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox and polio. The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm. [...] Unfortunately, Secretary Kennedy’s actions are making a worrisome situation even worse by defunding the research that could help us prepare for the next pandemic. This month, he canceled nearly $500 million in research for the kinds of vaccines that helped us stop the Covid pandemic. At the same time, Mr. Kennedy is cutting funding to states to prepare and respond to future outbreaks of infectious diseases. This is unacceptable. [...] Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans’ lives in danger, and he must resign. In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a C.D.C. director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories.

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BREAKING: Trump tariffs found ILLEGAL by U.S. appeals court

“In a huge blow to the White House, and a big win for everyone else, a federal appeals court has just ruled that Trump’s sprawling tariffs are unlawful and invalid,” says Chris Hayes.

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🚨 BREAKING: Leavitt SLAMS Jen Psaki for calling out MAGA’s empty “thoughts and prayers” after tragedies while doing NOTHING to address guns:

"It is utterly disrespectful to deride the power of prayer… I would encourage Ms. Psaki to pray more than ever."

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey talks with Jen Psaki about the horrific shooting at Annunciation Catholic School that has left his community in shock and grief. Frey calls for Americans to recognize the victims of today's shooting not as somebody else's kids, "think about them as your own," and encourages a loving perspective but also real action to address America's gun problem.  Aug. 27, 2025

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I wonder if Trump (and the far-right justices on the Supreme Court) know that many of the founders did NOT want the U.S. to have a standing army, exactly for this reason.

This is part of why the 2nd Amendment was written, so that state governors could have "well-regulated militias" under their control to ensure that the federal government could not use the American army in a tyrannical way against the states.

This is also why the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was passed.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the U.S., we have a lawless president acting very much like King George III from whom the colonists rebelled.

Someone might want to tell Trump that the colonists used the King's deployment of the British army in American cities like Boston as one of the examples in the Declaration of Independence of the King's "tyranny."

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”

 —Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). An example of the "absolute Tyranny over these States" by the "King of Great Britain."

____________ Source image for Declaration of Independence

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Psaki: Bizarre Trump Cabinet suck-up meeting feeds his misguided interest in dictatorship

Jen Psaki shares samples of the gross, sycophantic fawning of Donald Trump’s Cabinet members at a group meeting that leaves little wonder why Trump thinks “a lot of people say” he should be a dictator. His own Cabinet already treats him like one.

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Charles Borges, the chief data officer at the Social Security Administration, resigned Friday — days after filing a whistleblower complaint about Department of Government Efficiency employees at the SSA.

He said in the complaint that the DOGE employees had uploaded a copy of the entire country's Social Security information to a "vulnerable cloud environment." Borges' resignation from the SSA was confirmed by the Government Accountability Project, which is providing his legal representation.

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After resigning, CDC official says agency is being “weaponized”

A former top CDC official who resigned this week is blasting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying his policies on vaccines “do not reflect scientific reality.” Nancy Cordes has more on a tumultuous week at America’s public health agency.

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The damage this man has done is incalculable. - George Takei

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Trump GETS BOOED BADLY in DEEP RED DISTRICTS

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump getting booed badly in red districts at town halls and events held by his Republican stooges.

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While everyone should take precautions to stay well, folks in certain states should be extra careful.

If you’re like most people in the U.S., you probably either know someone with COVID-19 right now, know someone who just got over an infection or have the virus yourself.

COVID cases are high as kids go back to school and folks return home from summer trips. It’s part of the COVID pattern, the virus tends to peak in late summer and again in the winter, but just because it’s part of a pattern doesn’t make a COVID infection any less severe, scary or annoying than years past.

While COVID cases are high throughout the country (read: don’t discount your stuffy nose as “just a cold”), cases are particularly high in certain states. Here’s what to know: