#Fiscal Responsibility Act

[govtshutdown]

CRS Report IN12433 The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) in FY2025: Current Status

A CRS Insight into the act passed in June 2023 to raise the Debt Ceiling ad its impact on the new fiscal year.

[bitchlessdino]

Good Roommates Don't (m)

for @ddeonghwa-s secret cupid collab i recieved you @haologram! Secret Cupid Masterlist found here!

Pairing: roommate! Minghao x barista!afab!reader Word count: 14.1k rating: R Summary: Xu Minghao had been the most ethereal being you've ever laid your eyes on to the point being unable of functioning like a normal person, but now you're roommates. Only time will tell when you lose your mind keeping your hands to yourself, so there needed to be a list of things you don't do if you wanted to be a good roommate. tags: meet-ugly, strangers to roommates to lovers, college au, barista au, down bad!reader, mentions of band, brief bdsm, mc fell first he fell harder, cum swapping, spitting, oral (giving and receiving), face riding, unprotected sex author note: thank you @lovetaroandtaemin and @gyubakeries beta-reading this with me. after writing towtsyfdtotbycf (holy shit) i was in a little bit of a slump and had several and i mean SEVERAL versions of this and for months racked my brain how i wanted to do this. Alta, i care for you deeply and we've gotten close in the last year or so, so i really wanted to write something that would amuse you and that you'd enjoy. and if you hate it you can use it as leverage to berate me on discord lol. but please, my valentine, enjoy my gift to you. happy Valentines day Alta (and tell me was i really not that slick) <3

When you first met Minghao, you almost killed him trying to save his life. At least, that's what you thought you were doing.

All you had to do was bear a normal shift at the Coffee Shop, attempt a semblance of a smile for the oncoming customers, and clock out at your normal hour, but the universe couldn’t even give you that. Instead, they sent you the hottest guy imaginable, along with the swiftness of a gazelle, the strength of a gorilla, and the intuition of a garden gnome. That day just confirmed that some things were better left alone.

A few things were already going wrong that day. For one, your alarm didn't go off. The alarm being your mom, who usually kicked you out of bed first thing at 9 am, since she had a doctor’s appointment. Fair enough. The strings of fate got you there. All the more reason why moving out seemed like a distant dream rather than a close reality. Were you really capable of being a functioning adult? 

Then there was the bus and having to shell out twenty bucks for a Lyft when the next scheduled bus was reported to have broken down and was no longer an option. That twenty bucks could’ve been your meal for the next week, but no, being fiscally responsible was a circus act, and you were the clown being pied in the face repeatedly. As if you weren’t already putting on a face and juggling multiple things enough on a daily basis, today was no different. 

And then, you were late to work—which again, was nothing new—but you were hoping that Nayeon, who was scheduled as the shift manager, she’d let you off with a warning. Yet, somehow, that went wrong as well, seeing that the shittier manager on your shift, Manager Fi, was present instead. And, by the look in the old man's eyes, he wasn’t happy about it either, especially considering he assigned you bathroom duty for the end of your shift to make up for your tardiness. He never liked you since you started. Then again, he didn’t like anybody, and vice versa.

This morning was bad omen after bad omen.

Leading up to finally meeting Minghao—tall, scorchingly hot Minghao, , with lips that looked soft as clouds. You hadn’t seen him around before until today, and perhaps it should’ve stayed that way, because you couldn’t see yourself facing him ever again.

He walked in with his large group of friends, all almost nearly as charming as him with a handful of faces that you’ve seen once or twice, but none that stood quite out like his. He had the kind of face that made you want to paint murals, write ballads, or stare long enough to linger too long over the same spot you were cleaning on the counter, windshield wiping until the wet streaks you wiped off devolved to discoloration and damaged the countertop’s cheap sealant. Eventually, you averted your gaze to conceal your flushed cheeks—turning away in clear embarrassment, thinking about how much of a fucking creep you probably looked overtly gawking at him—but you’d soon realized that was the least of your worries. You’d soon wish it ended with you looking like a creep.

The next moment you lifted your eyes towards him again, you found him in a compromising position, one that had you thinking—and that was your first mistake. His face twisted with discomfort, and he gasped as he covered his mouth. A million thoughts raced through your mind, considering all the possible reasons for his distress, and one screamed the loudest above all, setting off alarm bells. So you—being meddling and troublesome you—acted on instinct.

Hopping over the counter, you raced towards him, pulled him off the booth which he was luckily on the edge of, and immediately attempted the Heimlich. Finally, your CPR certification could be put to use. You embraced him from behind, putting pressure on his ribcage as you launched and thrust yourself against him, forcing whatever was lodged in his throat out of his body.

“I’ve got you!” you exclaimed heroically.

You put in as much strength as you could muster, truly hoping to save a life today, thinking out of all things that have gone wrong today, at least this would be one thing you’ve done right. You could feel your ancestors looking down on you to witness a proud moment in your otherwise boring and mundane life. 

After several rough collisions with his body, he eventually spat something chewed up and unsightly onto the booth’s table, drawing the attention of several onlookers if your boisterous shouting hadn’t already. His friends were quick to look away, wincing in disgust while the cute boy doubled over in pain, holding himself by the ribs as you ran your eyes over at him in concern.

“Are you alright, sir? That must’ve been terrifying to suffocate on something so suddenly.”

He then finally lifted his head. His cheeks were flushed as anguish took over his features. “I wasn’t choking,” He rasped.

“...Come again?”

“Oh my god!” A third-party witness stood up dramatically from their seat. “This barista just saved this young man’s life!”

Suddenly, you were punished with attention, cheers specifically. All except the people who sat at the cute boy’s table clapped for you—or, rather at you now—and gave you standing ovations for your grand heroic act, when in fact, it wasn’t heroic at all. Meanwhile, you attempted to settle them down, flapping your hands dismissively and growing hot all over. You looked over the man you so-called saved as he strained to sit back in his seat, being tended by the friends he came with.

“Dude, you okay?”

“Shit, that looked like it hurt.”

“You probably shouldn't have been drinking it that fast, Minghao.”

It turned out you had severely miscalculated the situation. What appeared to be choking, prompting you to improperly administer a rough but appropriate Heimlich maneuver, was simply a mildly exaggerated reaction to hot coffee followed by a muffin to alleviate his burnt taste buds. You, of course, profusely apologized, as if you weren’t embarrassed enough for staring at him the whole time working your entire shift at the coffee shop because he was the most breathtakingly stunning person you’ve ever seen in your life. You might’ve just about broken his ribs and made his life flash before his eyes by abruptly slamming your body against him repeatedly, and not in the fun way.

Rather than an apartment, you were in desperate need of a hole deep enough to lead you to the core of the Earth to hide you from everyone else on the crust, ideally with cheap rent and good air ventilation. 

You bowed your head in humiliation, unable to meet any of their eyes, especially with the possibility of them remembering your face with a lawsuit waiting to happen. “I can’t believe that happened, I am so sorry. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, please let me know.”

“It’s okay, really, but I think we’ve had enough excitement for today if you don’t mind.” 

The attractive stranger—or Minghao, as you’ve learned from his friends who immediately rushed to him in concern—shook his hand in the air reassuringly. “Just, no more of that, alright? Make sure someone’s actually choking before trying to save them.”

“Right, please have a wonderful rest of your day,” you said, before returning to your station and disappearing behind the breakroom, screaming into your cubby and avoiding human interaction for as long as you could.

That scene replayed in your mind over and over like a recurring nightmare, burning the image of his beautiful face with such disdain for all eternity, while his name etched into your brain in permanent ink, embedded in every wrinkle in your brain. Minghao. A devastatingly beautiful name for a devastatingly beautiful owner.

Ugh. Get a fucking grip.

You just needed to get through the rest of the day. It would just be a couple more hours until your shift ended, and then you’d leave on the dot. It’d be just in time to make your appointment to meet your new potential roommate. Hopefully, it would be the silver lining of today’s catastrophic mess.

You met on electronic class forums while attending the same Cultural Studies course and somehow ended up relying on each other for notes. By your chat history, you seemed to have a lot in common—with the exception of his preference for tea over artisanal coffee—and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t get giddy seeing the green circle next to his username. Recently, he had just talked about moving into town after pondering the idea for so long, and as fate may have it, you’ve been looking for your own place to stay. You figured he seemed nice enough, and he even offered a reasonable quote on rent. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look. You just hoped he was as friendly in real life as he was online—with the day you had, you needed a win.

And, that win started with Chinese food, his choice, and it was a good one. You hadn’t been at this location before, taking note of the old-fashioned aesthetic touched by the harshness of modern neon signs that lit even the darkest of hallways. You were now thinking you ought to come more often as the heavenly notes of soy, ginger, and whatever concoction bled through the kitchen curtains and wafted through your nostrils the moment you passed through the double doors. Immediately, you were greeted by the host, visibly tired and overworked, with dark circles under his eyes, before he led you to a table in the center of the restaurant. You settled your nerves with a glass of water, trying to let the horrific events from today fade to as black as the soy sauce loitering on your table, waiting for a plate of dumplings to accompany them.

Funny how you could still have an appetite after everything that happened.

It wasn’t too long after you heard the same doors you walked through open, setting off the familiar sound of its wind chimes. You peered behind you, catching a glimpse of the new arrival, and immediately spun back in your seat, startled by the face that passed through your eyes. Trepidation brewed within you as the unsolicited visitor had your stomach in knots. 

You couldn’t take another incident tonight. 

You slunk into your seat, burying your chin in your shirt, hoping you’d somehow camouflage into your seat, facing away from the new arrival. Meanwhile, his eyes skimmed the room, walking in with purpose without guidance and greeting the employees as if he were right at home. Fortunately, he had yet to notice your presence as you slinked out of view the moment he passed by you to sit at the bar, while you made way into a booth in the dark corner of the restaurant, cursing the fates for their cruel games once again. You just had hoped that your new roommate would hurry it up already so you could get out of here before you were discovered.

And after about ten minutes, it felt as if all hope was lost. There was no sign of them and you were wondering if you had been stood up. Amid your anticipation, you were forced to pay attention to the person you were avoiding, seeing his patience wear thin with the tap of his foot as he sipped the last of his iced tea. Not a moment too soon, you saw him pluck his phone out from his pocket, fingers skittering over the screen before bringing it to his ear and scanning the restaurant’s floor plan. In the same instant, your phone went off,  blaring your cursed ringtone, ‘Pocketful of Sunshine’, and the realization—along with the panic—quickly set in. 

Alerted by the noise, his head whipped up from his screen. His eyebrows rose in shock, not all expecting the outcome that arose, and he dropped to his feet and quickly darted toward the sound that you—for the life of you—could not turn off fast enough. His footsteps matched the rate of your heart pounding in your chest, growing louder and closer until he found the source and located you cowering in the corner.

You lifted your head to lock eyes for the first time since this morning just as you finally managed to silence the ringtone and gave him an awkward laugh, waving with your phone in hand. Taking a nervous gulp, you awaited his disappointment, expecting him to make his quick exit after evaluating in the two seconds of your meeting that this arrangement would not work out because you were a deranged psycho with a savior complex. To your pleasant surprise, that didn't happen. Instead, you were met with a gentle smile and a glint of curiosity in his eyes. “There you are.”

You forced a sheepish chuckle. “Here I am, ha.”

Minghao softly chuckled before tucking his phone in his back pocket. “And to think just this morning you ‘saved my life.’”

You shut your eyes tightly, hands pressing together as if begging for forgiveness. “Again I am so, so sorry for that. It did look like you were choking.”

He shook his head reassuringly. “So you’ve said. I’m Minghao, or PalE8. Nice to meet you, CafeMixr0.”

“Is it…nice to meet me?” You asked dubiously.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

You blinked incredulously. “Well, for several reasons.”

He shrugged before entering the booth and leaving a healthy distance to sit just across from you. “Can’t think of any. Have you ordered anything yet?”

You shook your head, befuddled by his nonchalance, waiting to see the catch, if there was any.

“Good thing I know everything worth ordering.” His hand shot up before grabbing the attention of a server to get his order taken.

You weren't sure where the night was going. All you knew was the boy that you almost killed this morning was sitting across from you looking as breathtaking as he did this morning, even while slurping up his stir fry that was glossed with a sheen of chilli oil and swelling up his already full lips. Rather than a roommate meetup—if that was still the case—it felt like a date, a date you were exceedingly ill-prepared for.

Suddenly, you could feel the sweat on the back of your knees, feeling the strong urge to sniff the clothes on your back, unsure when the last time you did a fresh load of laundry and if your current attire was included in that load at all. Not to mention that bathroom duty that was forced upon you, which no doubt seeped into your clothes. You were better off naked, but then that would be an entire different kind of meeting, wouldn’t it?

“You’re okay, right?” You asked, trying to distract yourself from your spiraling thoughts as you barely finished your portion of chow mein—which was absolutely heavenly, to put it lightly.

He let out a light chuckle before kindly reassuring you. “How many times are you going to ask me? You and everyone from this morning. I’m fine, able-bodied and everything.” 

“I just felt really bad. You looked really hurt.”

He couldn’t suppress his grin, finding your cautiousness amusing, but it only added to your unease. “I was hurt. You’re really, really strong.”

You winced. “Again. I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a quality of a good roommate.” He finished the last bit of his meal before dropping a couple of bills without asking for the tab. “Come on. I’ve got to show you the apartment.”

You raised an eyebrow while sipping your warm tea before tapping your mouth with a napkin. “You still want to room with me? After this morning?”

“There’s not a lot of good options for roommates in the city, and what are the odds that you’ll try to kill me twice?”

He had a fair point, and it wasn’t like you had options lining up either. You just had to hope he didn’t regret taking this chance on you.

A big reason why you wanted to move out was to learn to be on your own, but in addition to that, the city had pretty much everything to offer. The city had it all, from job opportunities to the right people to meet, and the apartment Minghao led you to was the center of the entirety of it. High above the town square, in a room several floors up, there was a nook that had a view through a large window overlooking everything within about a two-mile radius. If there was anything nice to say about the city, it definitely looked better from where you were standing. The street lights illuminated streets, neon signs brought the local businesses to life, and people that ran the night life lived it to the fullest in the flashiest clothes imaginable. You had never seen your city like this before.

Meanwhile, the apartment itself was gorgeous and already fully furnished with stylish furniture and greenery that touched the kitchen and living room. It was graced with Minghao’s taste in art and an eccentric—but tasteful—color palette of warm browns, olive greens, and rustic oranges. It felt like walking into Minghao’s mind, seeing into his world, and you were given the opportunity of it being yours, being part of his world. He was generous enough to even let you pass through the front door.

“So?” he asked, gauging your interest, watching as you looked down at the city from the large window nook in awe.

You softly scoffed, unable to take your eyes off the beautiful view calling to you like a siren at sea.  “Um, I’m sorry, you had trouble finding a roommate, how?”

He crossed his arms, admiring the sight with you, glancing at you through his peripheral vision and grinning when he saw the childlike sparkle in your eyes. “I’m new to the city, and everyone I know here has their own living arrangements. I didn’t want to go too far in looking for a new roommate. I thought we'd work well together, since we’re based in the same city now and have a lot in common based on our conversations.”

“I almost killed you this morning,” You’ve pointed out to…death.

“Although you’re…impulsive and unpredictable, I’ve seen worse. I think I’ll manage.” He splayed his hand in front of you, gesturing for a shake to officially seal the deal. “What do you say? Do you still want to be roommates?”

Everything about this screamed it was a bad idea. Putting aside the fact that you nearly killed the man, you could barely stand in the presence of him without your mind drifting to dark waters. It didn’t take rocket science to understand that putting you in that same living quarters with Minghao meant you might have to live every day together with your hands tied behind your back and thighs taped shut. You’ve surprised yourself with how you’ve managed to keep your composure sharing the same air—the air you were even thinking of savoring as you contemplated this offer.

You were down-righteously-bad. You weren’t a fit roommate for Minghao in the slightest.

Yet, you took his hand, letting his cool palm clash with your warmth as his digits wrapped around you in a tight squeeze before shaking. “Let’s do it.”

And that marked the start of a new chapter of your life, unraveling the challenge of being Xu Minghao’s roommate. Only, he wasn’t the challenge. He was a breath of fresh autumn air. He was kind beyond words and accommodating in every step of your move. You were already familiar with his gentle and patient nature, as he had frequently taken the time to clarify complex ideas for class, and you’ve learned about the majority of his interests prior from your online discussions, but seeing PalE8’s traits in person—embodied in Minghao—was bizarre. You realized he was still a stranger after all. A stranger that claimed your breath with a single bat of his eyes and turned your stomach inside out worse than a bad case of food poisoning, no less.

Meanwhile, the neighbors knew him by name, were endeared by his presence, and found him to be a delightful conversationalist as well as a helping hand when the situation called for it. He was better than your friendly neighborhood spiderman. He was your kind, considerate, intricately woven, beautifully complex, and knees-bucklingly handsome Minghao. 

You weren’t usually a sexual deviant, at least not to this extent, but Minghao brought something out of you that you hadn’t felt for another person. However, if you were going to live together, that had to change. This crush was going to have to dwindle out of existence if you wanted to live together—emphasis on you—in peace.

So, that’s when you decided to make a list of rules that only you had to follow. Sure, you were an adult, and the thought of giving yourself rules to keep your hands to yourself was juvenile and stupid, but for the sake of your sanity, you were looking for anything that might work. That’s when you decided to make a list of things “good roommates don’t do”, thinking it would be shorter and easier to sum up than a long redundant list of things good roommates would do, and the first thing to top the list was easy.

Good roommates don’t almost kill each other (again).

That seemed easy enough to remember, considering the first time was traumatic enough, and fortunately, it didn’t take too much effort, considering you hardly saw each other despite living together. 

You ended up taking up more shifts at work, desperate enough to even join the catering team, to keep yourself busy and afford the new expense of rent, sacrificing a lot more of your free time. Meanwhile, Minghao’s work schedule was not only demanding, it was inconsistent. Working at a popular art gallery as an artist and attendant with frequent and erratic events to go to until late at night prompted your roommate to be seen home a lot less than expected. By the time either of you got home, there wouldn’t be so much of a hello or goodbye either, just the sounds of bodies falling on beds in either rooms as the day’s fatigue engulfed you until you succumbed to sleep.

You’d be lying if you said that you weren’t a little disappointed by these circumstances, but then again, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. Seeing him as little as you did meant less opportunity for you to screw things up around him, because it seemed to happen quite frequently when he was around. The few times you did cross paths, you still found ways to humiliate yourself.

“That’s mine.”

You held the toothbrush mid-scrub, bubbles foaming at the corners of your mouth, “Eh?”

“I think you’re using my toothbrush.”

Your cheeks immediately grew warm, and you shielded your face with the back of your hand. You spat into the sink and splashed water on your face to rid yourself of toothpaste residue before turning back to respond, his words jumbling in your head and bouncing from corner to corner to process them. “I-I don’t think so, this is the one I always use.”

He snickered, leaning against the door frame and crossing his arms, delectably dressed down in a gray tank top and sweatpants. The tempting taste of domesticity was sweet and permeated your tastebuds. “If that’s the case, we’ve been sharing, because I’ve always kept my brush there in the marble cup. Yours should be behind the medicine cabinet where you first left it.”

“What? You sure?” you pinned the used toothbrush on the sink’s porcelain before cracking open the medicine cabinet. “I’m pretty sure I took it—Ah!”

Startled by your findings, you dropped the toothbrush you gripped in your hand onto the floor when you’ve proven Minghao right as his toothbrush fell to the ground, now defiled with your oral bacteria and whatever was on the floor. The one day you take a shift later than usual because a member begged to take on more shifts, it blew up in your face. Seokmin, you will rue the day. “I-I’ll clean it!” You offered in a panicked tone.

He pushed himself off the threshold, waving his hand dismissively. “Don’t, please. It’s dirty; I can just replace it.”

Filled with guilt, you stepped aside to watch him pick up the dirty brush before disposing of it in the waste bin, “Sorry.”

“You say that a lot.” 

He pulled a fresh toothbrush out of a drawer and ripped it out of its packaging. It was notably identical to his previous and your current abandoned toothbrush, down to the bristles. “No worries. See,” he turned the new hygiene tool for inspection, “Clean.”

“Regret having me as a roommate yet?” you joked anxiously towards his reflection in the mirror.

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Nothing I can’t manage. I lived in a boarding house full of guys that shared things without asking and it didn’t stop at toothbrushes. You’re the first roommate I’ve had that’s apologized. I say that’s an upgrade.”

He went on to brush his teeth with his newly obtained brush, christening the bristles with a squeeze of fluoride toothpaste before scrubbing against his pearly whites. He never ceased to amaze you with his aloof attitude towards the situation, as if he’d become accustomed to your chaos when he didn’t need to be at all. This situation, however, did indicate that you had another thing to be added to the list.

Good roommates don’t use each other’s toothbrush (even by accident)

In your room just before you left for work, you haphazardly added to the list you put on a crumpled piece of paper you kept in your wallet, ensuring you held your list close before setting the pen aside. Your heart pounded against your chest, thinking what that had meant all this time. How you’ve pretty much swapped saliva nearly every day with Minghao since moving in. The fact that it had gone on for so long repulsed you, but not anymore than the tiny part of yourself that maybe had always known and continued to do it. 

You held your digits to your lips, brushing the pads against the slit of your mouth, ragged breaths slowly leaving your lungs as you reached your enamel. Tension pooled in your stomach as the images that infiltrated your dreams were currently being conjured in your consciousness, while arousal chased down your legs as you clenched them together. Jolted back to reality, you wound your eyes shut, remembering how little he cared about the matter, how nonchalant he was when he found out. Meanwhile, here you were: perverse, losing your mind, and letting your imagination run wild like a hormonal teenager with her celebrity crush. 

Fuck. You needed a night out. You had been cooped up in the apartment for too goddamn long. The only other place you went was work, and knowing labor laws, they had to give you a night or two off for all the time you’d been putting in. There was a whole outside world, and you needed to buck up and take advantage of it. You had to do something other than fawn over your very hot roommate. Losing some spare change was worth the sanity. At least, you hoped it was.

“You going out tonight?”

Hearing a familiar tenor voice, your head lifted up from fixing the strap of your shoes to see him remove his coat and store it away in the front entrance closet. “Oh, you’re home,” you stated.

“Yeah. The gallery is closed tonight for a bigger show this weekend, so I have a couple days where I’m off earlier than usual.”

More time for Minghao to be at home. Great. 

You nodded, keeping your cool at the sight of his turtleneck hugging his lean and toned frame, making your heart work overtime in place of you this evening. “I see, but yeah. A couple of my friends and I are trying out that new place that just opened up in midtown.”

“Oh, let me know how that goes. Me and some friends had plans to go there too.”

“Okay.” You hurried your way to the door. “Don’t wait up.”

“Wait.”

Hand on the door knob, you cursed under your breath, squeezing your eyes shut as if bracing for impact before opening them, and turned around with an innocuous expression. “Yes?”

He held out his hand. “Your phone please.”

“Hmm? Why,” you asked, unlocking it before complying.

He smiled accepting it, before swiping his fingers off the screen. “I’m sending myself your location.”

And there your heart when pitter-patter again at thoughtful and kind hot as fuck Minghao. “I just told you where I’d be.”

“That could always change. Here,” he said, handing your phone back, beaming back at you warmly. “Just in case something happens, and you can always call me if you feel unsafe, okay?”

You gave a soft pout, cheeks growing warm at the thought of Minghao’s concern over you. It pleased you more than it should’ve. “Thanks. What are you gonna do tonight?”

He shrugged, taking a quick glance over his shoulder. “Maybe do some light reading and tea, paint if inspiration hits me.”

You gave a small grin, thinking just how Minghao those activities sound. “Sounds enlightening. Okay. I’ll be home soon.”

“Be safe.”

Even long after you’d left, you kept thinking about that interaction. How domestic it felt, how safe it made you feel, how seen you really were. It made you wonder if he was tracking you right now, looking at his phone, staring at the dot indicating where you were located. You wondered if he was thinking about you right now, because you were most certainly thinking about him.

Your mission of trying to forget Minghao by going out definitely was not working, but you took that as a sign to keep drinking. Your friends didn’t get to see you often with how much you worked, so they were just happy to see you were having a good time, not knowing you were trying to drown out the consuming thoughts of a certain man with a peculiar color scheme. 

They wouldn’t have known the way you let yourself get felt up by a stranger near the dance floor, standing so close you could smell the knock off cologne he was practically bathing in as his breath hung in the air against your neck. When it went nowhere, he eventually left, looking for prospects elsewhere, while you stuck to your mission, seeing it work at some point at night. Until it didn’t, but you didn’t remember because eventually it’d all fade to black.

Your eyes ripped open, waking up with the biggest headache, blinded by the natural rays of light bleeding through blinds—only your room didn’t have blinds. You specifically made sure to have blackout curtains because you couldn’t stand waking up to the sun, and that hasn’t ever changed. Grumbling irritatingly along the lines about who turned on the lights, you flipped on the other side of the bed with a half awoken daze, your blurry vision making out a lumpy figure underneath the covers.

You drew closer in confusion, trying to make sense of what you were seeing before taking in the fact the lump had a face as blinding as the sun you turned away from, startling you upon recognition. Your eyes shot open, wide awake now, and you nearly stumbled out of the mattress before his arms grabbed you, latching on you before you could fall off and safely secured you in his tucked embrace. 

“It’s a bit early for your charming antics, isn’t it?” Minghao chucked with closed eyes.

You blinked back at him, licking your lips anxiously. “How am I here right now?”

His eyes slowly opened, adjusting to the light. “You mean alive or in bed with me?”

Your cheeks grew hot. “B-both.”

“I wish I had an answer for the first question, but it seems your creator had more plans for you. As for your second concern, you seemed confused and tired, and I assumed you confused this bed for yours.”

“You should’ve kicked me out.”

He shrugged nonchalantly, rubbing his hands over your shoulders and sending a chill down your spine. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

You let out a soft sigh, ridden with guilt. “I’d deserve it. I must’ve been annoying to deal with.”

He knitted his brows together, the corner of his lips softly turning down. “You really don’t like yourself.”

“No—well, maybe not lately. Maybe I’m just coming to the realization I’m not a good roommate.”

“No one is good at anything their first time.”

“You’re not denying it!”

“You’re a fine roommate.” Patting you on the back, he threw off the covers and pushed himself out of bed, leaving his room to trod toward the kitchen. You followed after curiously, like a duckling that imprinted on its mother, watching as he pulled out ingredients from the fridge’s shelves. “Anything you’re allergic to?” He asked over his shoulder.

“Nothing comes to mind.” You answered hesitantly.

“Good. The recipe is fairly easy anyway, it shouldn’t kill you.”

Your eyes widened and you quickly stood by his side as he set all the items down, he followed with gathering bowls and cookware. “You’re cooking for me?”

“Mmh-hmm.”

“You don’t have to.”

He turned his head slightly. “You have a headache, don’t you?”

“Yes but—”

“It’s just egg drop soup.” He patted your shoulder nodding his head over at the counter stool either of you would often have breakfast. “Sit. It’ll be done in a few minutes.”

You sat patiently by the counter, watching him chop and throw ingredients into a small pot, which filled your shared residence with a savory aroma. As soon as he was done, he presented the dish in front of you, garnishing it with fresh chopped scallions and parsley. He picked up a serving with a soup spoon and gently blew on the top before taking a quick sample and grinning at the result. Scooping with the same spoon, he held a serving towards you with proud eyes.

“Try it,” he urged.

As you accepted the offering, you tried not to think about how you were about to share yet another household item that would enter both your mouths and let the simple flavors fan out on your tongue, the warmth of soup dispersing throughout your body. You hummed in delight, already feeling it work its magic. “It’s delicious,” you said softly.

He grinned. “Feel better.”

“Thanks, Minghao.”

“No problem at all.” 

As you enjoyed your thoughtful breakfast, your roommate cleaned up his mess. He wiped down whatever residue was left behind before heading to his room and coming out properly dressed in brown slacks and muted green patterned sweater when you were just about done eating. “Heading to work now.”

“You had work?” You asked surprised, “Why did you waste time cooking? You could have left already.”

He softly scoffed heading to the door. “I spent—what, five or ten minutes? It’s fine. See you later.”

In the last 24 hours, Minghao managed to make sure you were safe by tracking your location, gave you a good night's rest by not disrupting your sleep, and made you breakfast right before work. Then there’s you, black out drunk with almost no memory of last night (probably good you didn’t), annoying your overly nice and overly hot roommate, hogging a bed that isn’t yours, and eating a home cooked meal that probably set back his schedule. You were the worst. All the more reason for a new addition to the list.

Good roommates don't sleep in their other roommate’s bed piss drunk (again)

It seemed that this list of “don’ts” was getting longer, probably because you’re an awful roommate, and if there was a reward, yours would already be at the front door. You really, really had to make an effort to do something about this arrangement. Now that some time had passed and these interactions were becoming more frequent, avoiding him seemed to be out of question unless you wanted to give him the wrong impression. You would just have to become a better roommate, and that started with making up for this morning.

In the following months together, to atone for the bed incident and good deeds that followed suit, you shared the occasional breakfast if you had time (that is if you didn’t burn anything), even sometimes grabbing dinner or a late meal in the small gap before or after work. While in the late hours, when both of you should’ve been sleeping, you’d have a cup of your favorite beverages. He’d have his brew of tea for the night while you’d have a mug of coffee, awake under the stars and basking in the night, watching from the nook that you both grew fond of that was in the direction of the moon when it’s at its peak.

Of all people to share these moments with, you couldn’t imagine it with anyone else but Minghao. He was the peace amongst the chaos, the quiet you came home to after dealing with the noisy world that helped you heal like nothing else. You liked that about him, and now you were liking him too much, to the point you thought of him every day. What it’d be like for him to hold you in his arms, letting his warmth envelop your entire being the way his voice naturally does with a simple “it’s okay.” 

You’d imagine how he’d look at you, how lovers do when they ache for one another so desperately they could feel it down to every atom. You’d thought of the words he’d say to you, the words he’d say to someone he’s madly, irrevocably besotted with, and every letter and word and sentence would be spoken poetry. He’d feel like love. You didn’t think it was possible for you to grow more attracted to him, but learning all these wonderful things he does and seeing up close and personal how beautiful inside and out he was, you were developing feelings and growing all these desires that you were ashamed to admit out loud.

And with that, you pulled out your list and a pen, jotting in a new item.

Good roommates don’t live in every waking moment staring at them or thinking about wanting to kiss them (no matter how hard it is)

You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve already broken that rule, but the least you could do was hold yourself accountable.

However, writing the rule didn't prevent future instances. Not from fantasizing, not from wet dreams, not from imagining a life together where you rid all your inhibitions and clothes and succumb to drowning in each other. Unlike every other rule that you’ve managed to avoid, this one was the outlier, flipping your world on its head and preoccupying every second of your thoughts with all things Xu Minghao. And what sucked was you were so guilt ridden, you couldn't even let yourself enjoy it. 

This was your roommate for crying out loud. Your wholesome, nice, forgiving, and tolerant roommate that went beyond what was necessary to make you feel at home and comfortable. Only time will tell when he’ll see through you and finally kick you to the curb.

“Let’s go out.”

Your head lifted up from your phone with eyes large as saucers. “What?”

“We haven't really done anything together,” he suggested, cleaning up the dishes of the dinner you both had just had.

It was one of the few nights that you were both free. The coffee shop had more than enough staff, and you’ve exhausted the hours put in, while the art gallery was planning a grand exhibition, so they needed all hands on deck for the mornings for a few weeks, but evenings would be free until the week of. That left you two a lot more free time than you knew what to do with.

“We see each other all the time,” you pointed out.

“At home. We don’t hang outside the apartment aside from that one dinner the first day we met, so let’s go out.”

You blinked, watching him grab his coat before you could argue as he waved you over, his smile luring you closer and putting you under his spell without you realizing until it was too late. “Uh, where? It’s 9PM.”

“Anywhere.”

For someone who had only arrived in town a couple months ago, Minghao knew a lot of the good spots in the city.  If it wasn’t food, it was book stores. If it wasn’t book stores, it was tea shops. He had a clear plan of the city, and without so much looking at a GPS, he could find his way around better than any native. And considering all the people he came with that day you met the coffee shop and all the staff at the Chinese restaurant, his index didn’t stop at places. He seemed more familiar with the people in your hometown than you were. Between you two, he looked like the real local.

Walking alongside your roommate, you turned to him curiously, “How do you know the city so well when you’ve moved in somewhat recently?”

He gave a soft smile looking into the distance, as if the gust of wind that passed through you both hit him with a wave of nostalgia. “I’ve been visiting for about four years. I only had the guts to become a resident recently.”

“Why’d it take you so long?”

“Student visa processes, paper work, all those things. Also, this city is great, and everyone I've met and have become close with is amazing, but home is just home. It’s all I’ve ever known.” He let out a deep sigh, taking in a deep breath before stretching out his arms and let fall back to his sides, turning slightly to you. “This country and town has become a second, though, some things even my home can’t beat.”

You mused at that, intrigued that he could find something appealing in here, then again you've been here all your life, yet Minghao showed you more you could ever imagine of it. “Like what?”

He simply smiled as their feet stopped at their final destination, a location they both aimlessly walked towards just a little off the center of the town. “I’ll tell you, as soon as we try this place out.” 

Just off the center of town was a bar you had never heard of with a theme you’d never thought to put together on your own and definitely a place you’d never think to walk into with your roommate you were trying to keep platonic feelings for.

“Hey sexy babies, welcome to the Love in Leather BDSM Bar, where all your sexy dreams can come true.”

Oh, my god.

You were petrified. Every wall was decorated with leather or latex, either on display in a box, on a vulgarly displayed mannequin, or on an employee that was dressed in next to nothing, leaving no room for imagination. You weren’t shy about the theme of BDSM—there was always a small part of you curious about it—but it’s not like you’ve talked extensively about it with Minghao. The same person you were trying really hard not to think about sleeping with, which was especially hard in a place that served ‘cum shots’ and with their special for tonight being ‘buttery nipples.’

Glancing back at your roommate to get his reaction, he seemed to be just as startled with his findings as you were, but perhaps not as terrified as he should be, taking you by the wrist and weaving through the crowd with a marveled expression. You were grateful for the loud music playing the explicit versions of songs you wouldn’t otherwise hear on the radio, drowning out the sound of your heavy breathing and the loud thrum of your heart. You just had hoped he couldn’t feel your pulse under his fingertips, unable to untangle from his grasp as you felt the heat of his touch spread out through your whole body. You were trapped in a web you didn’t want to leave and that was the hardest kind to be in.

Suddenly, lights poured on the center stage of the bar. The music then slowed down, transitioning to another song, and a scantily leather clad woman entered that would erupt cheers of all clients seated in the chairs in front of her, to which she sent an air kiss and wink. Following the crowd, both you and Minghao decided to cheer along with them, your sounds of encouragement drowned out in the more enthusiastic and obscenely creative audience members of the establishment. Walking across the stage, she made a show of it, caressing her body in ways that would have a man on his knees howling at the moon (which you swore you heard once or twice in there) as money was thrown strewn stage like confetti, enough to pay for a few nice dinners uptown. After garnering the excitement, she descended down the steps of the stage, walking into her live audience. Her eyes skimmed through the endless crowds of people, landing on and picking one lucky front row member—a young, spry man no older than twenty-five—and brought him on stage, ensuing roars and applause, indicating the start of the real show.

What happened next was something you did not want to get into detail, but in layman’s terms, that audience member was having the time of his life with the use of a flog while everyone watched. You could only make the distinction of excruciating pain and pleasurable pain by the very loud affirmations coming out of his mouth and bouncing off the board he face planted on, and the words that passed through one of your ears and never wanted to come out the other. You were slack jawed from the scene, not at all expecting this scene today, and holy shit, you could not feel more suffocated knowing Minghao was witnessing all of this beside you. 

He stared back at the scene, expression unreadable, but he seemed interested and unable to look away like it was an oncoming train wreck, looking as if he was stuck on the tracks and was making sense of what he was seeing. Suddenly, his eyes locked with yours and you watched as they softened with a glint of something behind them before you swiveled your head, feeling yourself burn from your face to your ears, clenching your free hand. This felt eerily like a date, but unlike the first dinner, this felt like a real one. An immense sexually charged one. 

You were surrounded by sex at all angles, being tested to the most extreme degree. Tonight, you’ve learned dominance wasn’t particularly your thing, but if it were Minghao, perhaps you wouldn’t have minded. 

But this, this was overwhelming. As if sensing your turmoil, Minghao tugged your wrist, making you fix your gaze on him again and read the words that he mouthed from his lips. “Time to run.”

Your fingers interlocked and feet picked up speed as you headed toward the door, running aimlessly for miles out of the bar in fits of smiles and laughter. There was no plan and no destination, you both just wanted out, and you’d only stop running when you reached a bridge, both your bodies collapsing against the metal railing. You both gave out in heavy pants, your breaths mingling as you faced one another. 

“That’s crazy,” you managed to rasp. “Why did we think we could go in there?”

He gave you a tired grin back, looking in the direction from which you came. The light layer of perspiration made his shirt cling to his skin, and you get a sliver of his chest as he aired it out for comfort. “I don’t know. Try something new, but that.” He pointed where he faced. “That’s how I know so many places, I just walk inside.”

You ran your hand over your chest, baring the biggest grin. “Gosh. I feel like dying.”

“Iced coffee?” He kindly suggested.

“And tea?” You cared to offer.

Nodding back at each other, you both decided to walk the rest of the way back around, making a stop at a light night cafe and occupying their second floor balcony to taste the crisp air. As you sipped on your iced coffee and Minghao sipped on his warm tea, you quietly basked in the moonlit sky, as you’d done many times before. The adrenaline of tonight coursed through you still while you leaned against the railings and stared up at the stars, your elbows grazing close enough to spark that electricity that you’d feel whenever he ever got too close. This time, you were too tired to fight it, or you learned it’s about time you stopped trying to.

“I don’t drink coffee.” He abruptly confessed, penetrating the silence.

You softly scoffed, turning your head to him, taking his reminder as a jab for your ‘inferior’ tastes before taking a bigger sip of your delicious fresh roast press. “I know that. You prefer tea.”

“I mean, I don’t drink coffee, but the day you ‘saved me,’ I did.”

You hummed. “Oh. Yeah, you did. Funny. You got a coffee that day instead?”

He shook his head, smiling. “No, ask me why I drank coffee that day.” 

You rolled your eyes, placing your drink on the side table before leaning your elbows over the railing. “Okay. Why did you drink coffee, Minghao?”

“I drank my friend’s mug on accident, thinking it was my tea, then tasted how scaldingly hot and wretched it was—”

You gasped, offended as a barista, “I work really hard on those!”

He waved his hand to calm you down. “Let me finish. I mistook my normal tea for coffee…all because I got distracted, unable to stop thinking about the cute barista who wouldn't quit staring at me from behind the counter.”

“...I apologize for being a creep.”

He shook his head smiling and set his tea cup aside. “Not my point.”

You stared into the contents of your drink, shaking the ice inside as you stirred the straw, trying to find any remains of your beverage and stalling for time to follow up with a response. Lips pressed in a firm line, you glanced at him from the corner of your eye, silence met on the other end as he keenly observed you, mirroring your posture while he sipped his tea. “So…You thought I was cute,” you managed to sum up.

“Thought…think…know.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” You timidly asked.

“We’re roommates,” he reminded you, plain as day. “We should be honest with each other, right?”

“Honest,” you repeated, lethally soft.

“Yes, honest,” he confirmed just as quietly. “Don’t be afraid to tell me whatever is on your mind, just as I’ve told you what was on my mind.”

His honesty was cute, flattering. Your honesty could write up a restraining order. “Is that necessary? We only really live together.”

“It’s necessary because we live together, so yes, be honest about your feelings. Let me in on your thoughts, whatever they may be.”

Good roommates don’t forget to be honest about each other’s feelings.

He stood in front of you dangerously close, the lingering smell of his cologne that reminded you of the ocean wafting into your nose as he drew near. His gaze beckoned you close without so much a word passing through his lips, and you felt his presence close in on the distance as he leaned against the railing. You softly batted your eyes, adjusting to your sense being overtaken by all things Minghao, mind just filled to the brim with Minghao, as if you couldn’t get enough of him.

“You’re really committed to being a good roommate. I respect that,” you stated, harshly gulping. “Honesty. Where can I start?”

“Well, what are you thinking about right now?” He asked, face mere inches away from you, lips so plush you let out a wistful sigh.

“I’m thinking that…it’s really hard to think with your face so close in front of me.”

Despite that, he didn’t move, and instead he pushed a lock of your hair behind your ear, brushing against your helix to feel your flustered warmth bloom between his fingers. “Fair enough. What else?”

You wrapped your hand around the railing, stabling yourself on the floor in hopes of not falling over on your two feet, your breath being stolen in real time by your roommate who was looking more and more inviting by the second.

“And if I knew any better, I’d think you're about to kiss me.”

“Let’s wager that then,” he said as he reeled even closer, his fingertips once in your ears now guiding your chin, letting the surface of your lips feel the ghost of his as your breaths mingled against one another. “You can predict one of two things. One, I kiss you. Or two, I pull away. You get a prize if your answer is correct.”

“How is that a fair wager? You can easily change your response depending on how I answer,” you pointed out, ultimately playing along.

“I won’t,” he reassured in a coaxingly smooth tone. “I’ve made my choice.”

You raised a brow, attempting to look only subtly intrigued when in reality you’ve let him enchant you. “What’s my prize?”

“Loser grants whatever the winner wishes.”

“That’s irresponsible.”

“Knowing you, your request would be far from unreasonable.”

“I’m talking about you.” You narrowed your eyes, swallowing at seeing him come at you so close. “But, okay. I’ll play.”

The corner of his lips lifted mischievously, tilting his head to the side as his eyes narrowed back at you. “So, what’s your answer?” 

Your eyes flickered up to him, rounded up in intrigue as you tried to follow his gaze. “You’ll…pull away. Public displays of affection are cute, but maybe not your cup of tea, at least not grand ones like kissing, unless maybe it’s one the cheek or on the forehead.”

He smiled and gently tilted his head, eyes piercing into yours and taking a sharp breath before pulling away, crossing his arms with a soft pout on his lips. “You’re good.”

You felt the sting of rejection despite your victory, as if you’d hoped you’d be wrong. That he’d take you right there against the railing and give you a fervid kiss that broke you down to your knees and you could even taste in your dreams, but a win was a win. A predicted loss was better than a false victory.

“I guess I won.”

He sighed defeatedly, crossing his arms. “You did. So tell me, what desire would you like for me to fulfill for you?”

You shuddered at his choice of words, clamping your legs together. “Well, what would you have wanted me to do if I got the answer wrong?”

“Is that your wish? For me to answer the question?”

You softly scoffed. “Don’t be so cheap.”

He rolled his eyes before taking a sip of his tea, “Doesn’t matter, you didn’t get it wrong. You get the wish. So go on, tell me your wish.”

“…Fine. Grant me your wish as if you had won.”

“You want me to grant my own wish? That defeats the entire purpose,” he chortled with knitted brows.

“It’s my wish, so come on. What’s your wish?”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“And we didn't have to place bets, but it doesn't seem like there’s any rules against it, so go ahead. Tell me.”

Minghao sucked his teeth before complying. “Fine.” 

He moved toward you, hands settling over your hips and settling you on the floor beneath your feet as he gravitated toward, steadying his gaze on you. His face, inches away from you, and your breath hitched in your throat as he drew his lips near your ear. You heard the subtle squelch of his tongue as they licked his teeth, moments before the wish he dared you to grant poured out from his lush lips. “My wish is for you to…make me tea every morning, afternoon, evening, and every time I ask you to. Like my little tea gremlin.”

“Now that’s just evil, Xu Minghao,” You protested, lightly shoving him off.

He laughed. “No, it’s not! Think of it like pour over coffee.”

“Don’t try romanticizing it like it’s anything like my beautiful beans. Tea is tea. Coffee is coffee.”

“It was your wish to grant my wish.”

“Can I take it back?” You whined.

“It’d be dishonorable.”

You groaned. “Fine.”

He chuckled, “Let’s go home, hmm?”

Heading back home, you were embraced by a warm comfortable silence. There was a kind of silence that sanctioned your amicable living arrangement with Minghao to turn into something warmer, feverish even, something that you can’t even help but notice and your hands would occasionally graze one another on the way back, taking turn exchanging timid glances at you walked your path home.

“That was fun,” You admitted, taking off your shoes at the front door.

“Yeah, I think so. We should do it more often.”

You smiled at each other’s reflections as you stood in front of the bathroom mirror, seeing you take the same tube of toothpaste and started brushing your teeth. You smiled as he purposely bumped into you, raising his eyebrow as you stared pointedly at him in the mirror, not expecting you to retaliate with a light shove. Ensuing a nudging war, you attacked each other’s shoulders, getting caught in fits of giggles before you forced yourselves to split up, knowing nothing would get done if you both let it go on.

“Do you work tomorrow?” You asked through the gaping door of your room as he cleared a glass a water before bedtime, freshly out of a shower and the smell of his clean, light fragrance was beguiling even from a distance.

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmh.” He stalked over in your direction, a feign innocent smile on his lips. “That's too bad. We only really have nights like these together, it seems at least only for a little while.”

“It is,” You said, lathering up the last bit of lotion up your legs, feeling his eyes on you as they traveled the path of your hands.

The silence engulfed you, as if both of you were waiting for the other to make a sudden move, yet both of you remained still. Like a predator with its prey, unsure who was who, you both stood with uncertainty and palpable tension hanging in the air, waiting for the other to strike when the moment was right. Even the usually confident Minghao stood back as he observed you from a distance, eyes flickering over at you as you strided slowly towards him guarded with crossed arms.

“I guess, I’ll go to sleep now,” You finally said.

His gaze softened, nodding. “Okay,” he smiled, “good night.”

“Good night, Minghao. Sleep well.”

If only you had taken your own words to heart. 

That night, you couldn’t help but stare back at the ceiling, fiddling with the covers as the night’s events replayed in your head like a home movie, your thoughts traveling at a million miles a minute, too fast for you to stop and collect them—let alone process them—and stole your precious slumber. So, as you lay in bed awake at night, squeezing your eyes shut and waiting for the night to take you, waiting for the fatigue and sleep to come, it never arrived. Instead, your eyes ripped open, heart pounding in your chest as you sat up from the mattress and tore the covers off your body. Your legs pushed you off the bed and lifted yourself off, carrying yourself out the room and out the hallway with determined steps until faltering at the threshold of another front door before you softly knocked. 

You turned the knob, the door creaked open and you peeked your head through to see your roommate on the other end in bed, torso visibly bare as he slowly sat up at his late night intrusion. “Hey,” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “You’re up.”

“I think it’s the coffee,” you excused, clutching the edge of the door, “I can’t sleep.”

Wordlessly, he nodded, stretching an arm to beckon you towards him, and you slowly inched closer to him until you were completely under the covers. Occupying the space beside him, you nestled into the contours of his body as his arm cushioned the side of your head before facing one another, silence enveloping you. The only sound that bit into the silence was muted traffic, infinitely alive outside the walls of your confines. While it looked peaceful, and you felt as though you could melt into his arms, neither of you looked as if you were trying to sleep.

Rather, you stared at one another, making sleep even harder to attain as you traced every feature and took them in as if they were brushstrokes on a painting. Minghao may have worked with art every day, but he was a work of art in his own right, and you couldn’t help favor him above all others. You didn’t need a Van Gogh or Picasso, you had an original, a one of a kind Minghao.

And that’s when you saw his eyes begin to drift, lowering to the bottom half of your face, lips parting in intrigue as his breath fanned lightly against your cheeks. Your face flush in response, pushing your bottom lip between your teeth before they were caught, finding yourself doing the same with him and watching his mouth move in anticipation. You felt your pulse in your throat as much as you felt it between your legs, feeling arousal pooling and soaking your shorts.

“Do you want to wager another bet?” Minghao softly offered.

“What kind?” You breathed.

“The same bet, same prize. Do you think I’ll kiss you, or will I pull away?”

You mused at him, fingers extending toward him reluctantly, aiming for a lock of his hair laying stray on his forehead before smoothing it over his head, softly stroking him, feeling him lean into your touch. “Hmm, this time you’ll…kiss me,” you whispered with absolute certainty. “The tension is practically eating you alive.”

A grin stretched wide across his cheeks as a hand softly clasped over your face, thumb swiping across your cheek. “Right again.”

He closed the gap, slotting his lips between yours and languidly moving against you, letting you chase after his pace. You sighed against him, feeling his hand on your hip as he pulled your torso against his, the other rested against the nape of your neck as he reveled in your heat. Hands flying in his hair, you softly moaned as he kneaded your skin, feeling him trace the inside of your mouth with his tongue before he roughly pulled your weight from the mattress to topple you over him, letting your legs card between his.

“Minghao,” you quietly sounded against his lips, crushing your hips against his groin and hearing his sweet moan in response.

His muscles tensed as you pressed against him, while his legs clung to your thighs. His hands ran over the shape of your figure, unearthing an ungodly moan from your lips as he slipped beneath your shorts, etching over the curve of your ass and claiming your raw flesh in his hands, pushing you against him assertively.

You whimpered, grinding against him. “I know my wish.”

“Anything,” He tenderly mumbled.

“Call off work tomorrow.”

He smiled against your lips, bringing one of his knees to pin your bodies closer together. “Means you should too.”

“Oh, definitely,” You confirmed before reconnecting your mouths in a frenzied liplock.

Feeling the grind of your hips as his pelvis crushed against yours, his grunts slipped through every caress as his hand moved up your back. Soon, you started feeling something you had yet to see from Minghao in all your time living with him, the part of him you managed to evade but have envisioned a multitude of times, growing in his sweatpants and rubbing against your thigh the closer your bodies were.

“I have never wanted someone so bad,” He whispered in a soft ache. 

His hands crept underneath your shirt, brushing against your skin, pressing against the small of your back. Pressing his torso towards you, his erection adhered to your thigh, the tension coiling in your stomach burned like wildfire, at an unstoppable rage. “Minghao,” you mewled, impatience singeing on your tongue.

“Somehow, I can still taste coffee on your breath, but I don't really mind it. It tastes really good on you,” He admitted before kissing you deeper, his moans buzzing against your mouth, hungry and alive as his hands dug into your flesh with utter greed.

“You taste really good too.” Your hand body scoured south, cupping his size under your palm and tasting his gasp as you sucked him between your lips. “I wonder what else tastes good.”

“You are something else,” he mumbled, through quiet chuckles. “Just like you to act on impulse.”

You let out a light scoff. “You are so—”

“Don’t start things you can’t finish,” he softly warned with a smirk.

“I’m not the one you have to worry about finishing.”

You moved down, the covers draped over your head as you kept your eyes on him and resting on the hem of his sweats. Minghao’s breath hitched in his throat, gulping while he felt your nails lightly claw against his bare torso, tugging the waistband off the tent he forged, revealing the lack of underwear and restraint he had left, now sprung against your face.

“Shit,” you said grinning, claiming him by the shaft, thumbing over the precum glistening at the tip. “Even your cock looks pretty.”

A soft pink decorated his cheeks and a hand meekly shielded part of his face. “You staring is how I got myself hurt in the first place.”

“Then I’ll be careful not to hurt you this time—that is, unless you want me to.”

You spat on his cock, a translucent ribbon stretching from your tongue to his length. Your saliva lubing your knuckles, you squeezed his girth in your grip as you stroked and felt him pulse in your hands, growing bigger the tighter you clenched. Minghao’s arms propped himself up and behind him as his chest heaved, blood pumping with every drag of your fingers, shallow breaths slipping out of him as he fisted the sheets beneath him.

You kissed the curve of the head, lips pursed to wrap lightly around him, suckling down his shaft, and feeling him twitch against your mouth when you chuckled. He softly whined, his hand extended toward you to tenderly caress the side of your head and tacitly pleading with you as you teased him. Showing him mercy, you took him with an eager mouth, closing your lips around his cock as you steadied your gaze on him. Moans vibrating around his girth, your tongue tucked on the underside of his shaft, hands wrapped tightly around his base.

“Mmmh like that.” He swallowed, exhaling through his teeth the deeper you took him. His abdomen flexing overtly as you moaned around him, vibrated against his skin, your pink muscle tracing over his veins as you worked your jaw to hug a tighter grip. “God, you’re perfect. Don’t stop, please…” he panted.

He palmed at your hair headily, his motor skills not properly functioning as he sucked in his breath, feeling his presence explore deeper. He leveraged his hips to regain some ounce of control, but the sounds of moisture and squelching burned his ears, and the heart in his chest was running like a marathon. His eyes, fluttering in and out of focus, trained his gaze on you while his stomach tensed, grasping the vision of you getting wide-eyed and bold as you gingerly ate him alive. Burning the image into his retinas, it made him want to explode inside you.

Threading through your hair, he pulled them up and off your shoulders, showing off your pretty features, doing everything in his power not to give his climax an early appearance. “I’ve never seen such a pretty mouth take my cock so well. Then again, I’ve never had a pretty roommate like you, or anyone like you.”

Flustered from the flattery, you sucked him like your life depended on it as you grew hot, making Minghao’s task to regain control strenuous to achieve. You hollowed out your cheeks, leaving no room to breathe, and felt him in your throat as your vision rolled to behind your skull to the point your language deduced to the sounds of gagging. You gripped his hips, nails plunged into his flesh as your drool dribbled down his groin, slobbering over his cock in an erratic, hungry mess.

“Yes, like that. My god,” He praised through ragged breaths, hips jerking gently up into you. He lightly threw his head back, the urge to ram himself down your throat getting exceedingly more tempting, but he suppressed it as he dug his nails into his own palms. “I’m so close to cumming, can I–in your mouth or should I…?”

You hummed a confirmation before you swallowed him whole until you met the base, meeting his groin as he vanished inside you, breathing oxygen not even an afterthought. Images in front of you dulled in color, pictures shapeless and unclear, and you pushed past your boundaries to let him find home in your mouth, deeply intent with him finishing inside you one way or the other.

“F…f…fuck...”

Pleasure rippling through him, Minghao pushed himself up from his position, thrusting weakly as he cradled your head, pouring his thick, ivory load into your mouth, which was insistent on receiving every drop. He filled your cheeks, allowing warmth to coat the inside of your mouth as he tenderly stroked your hair in gratitude. Cupping your cheeks as he let his hips falter, he gently pulled himself out of your mouth, amused at how carefully you were trying to not let any of his cum seep past your lips as you sat between his legs.

His fingers danced under your chin. “Are you gonna swallow?” Minghao tiredly chuckled.

With smiling eyes, you tilted your head, as if asking if you should.

He pushed your hair behind you, softly pressing his lips against your tightly shut lips. “Don’t if you don’t want to.”

An idea occurred to you then, and in an instant you pushed yourself up to board him as your knees took either side of him, looming over him. His hands naturally found your waist as you lifted his chin, eyes staring at you curiously as his hands ran up body and gently clawed down, awaiting your next move. You then thumbed over his bottom lip before dipping between the slit of his mouth and saw it naturally part, taking the digit and settling it between his teeth.

Now confidently, you lowered your head, swirling the contents in your mouth before pushing your thumb deeper, prying the entrance wider, and finding no protest as he sanctioned it. He dug the pads of his digits into your flesh in anticipation. His eyes fluttering, he watched as your mouth withdrew the generous gift he gave to you before you gave it right back to him as it gracefully streamed down on his pulsing, eager tongue. And nothing satisfied you more than hearing him sigh wistfully as it landed.

It sent you shivers how beautiful he looked despite how vulgar the act was. Only Xu Minghao could make tasting his own cum look so ethereal, and it only made you wonder what other things a face this beautiful was willing to do. You swiped whatever fell from the corner of his lips with your thumb, sucking the residue like leftovers before you connected your mouths, sharing and tasting his lewd tang in violent swirls, and pulling away to watch it stretch between your tongues.

“I guess toothbrushes aren’t the only things you like to share,” Minghao teased before pushing you on your back, grinding his resurrecting arousal against your clothed heat and lathering the thick, viscous substance flat between your tongues in your mouths as it dribbled down your chins until there was nothing but slobber. It was a mess, and the most unmannerly you’ve ever seen him, and you’ve never been more turned on.

“My turn.”

With a rough hand, he tugged you by your legs towards him, hearing you let out a yelp, and shoved down your shorts to expose your glistening, mouth-watering, arousal soaked entrance. Be still his heart. He felt himself throb seeing you ruin his bed, but hell if he wasn't going to be sucking those juices out of the sheets until he’d tasted every drop.

He kicked off his sweats, leaving him entirely vulnerable while you witnessed his cock slowly twitch back to life before he laid on his stomach between your arched legs. “If we want to talk about pretty things, your pussy is high up on that list.”

Not waiting for a response, he licked a thick stripe up your inner thigh, flickering over your folds before sucking them in his mouth, using the tip of his tongue to tease your entrance. He felt the flutter of your core before spitting, lathering at the juices, coating at entrance but not peeking to see what was inside. “You’re already so wet, fuck.” 

“Hao…” You whined.

“Mmmh, I love how you sound,” he chuckled, running long strokes up your slit, wedged through you with every swipe, looking arm around your leg to hold you in place as his thumb brushed over your clit. “Are your moans always this delicious? Or are they reserved for when you’re thinking about me?” 

Shaking your head, you were too turned on to answer verbally, while his mouth closed around your clit and sucked, utilizing his fingers to assume their previous position. You clenched your stomach, fisting into the sheets as you spread your legs, feeling them already clam up from the tension as his tongue flicked against your sensitive bud in unison with his fingers twisted up into, and you couldn’t help but writhe underneath him.

“Yes, spread those pretty legs for me,” he encouraged with a haughty smile before burying his face, his moans vibrating up your walls as his tongue massaged your walls and tasted your cock pulsing nectar, sending chills up your spine.

You mewled, and feeling reserved, you held your hands up to your face to shield the tears collecting at your eyes threatening to fall, but Minghao grabbed you by the wrists, roughly pinning them to the bed.

His eyes narrowed back at you before softening almost menacingly, “Don’t cover your pretty face, watch me.”

“But—”

“I want you to watch me fuck your pretty pussy with my mouth. Don’t make me say it twice.” He warned before he got you a quiet nod, earning you a kiss against your inner thigh.

His hand flattened against your inner thighs again, pressing them further away from another and delving his tongue deeper as he rubbed your clit, working your insides until he tasted every inch of you possible. He buried his face, but his eyes were clear, staring at you as he worked his jaw, engorging with his mouth that sent you above and beyond and his eyes that saw you at the result of your undoing. You had no choice but to cling on, freeing yourself from his grasp to have your fingers fly in his hair, navigating him as you took him for a joy ride, his tongue shifting gears as it picked up pace.

“S-shit!” You rolled your hips, threading your fingers through his locks and clamping his head between your thighs as you pushed him deeper.

“Yes, ride my face—fuck, use me, please,” he pleaded in a cracked voice, pouring his heart into his feast until he was practically suffocating, worth it to worship you and bring you to the highest peak of your pleasure.

Your legs trembled as his moans infiltrated your heat, the intense flicks of his tongue titillating you to the brink of ecstasy until he used it to fuck you in time with his fingers thrusting inside, clutching you as you held him in place and grinding against him. “My god, Hao!”

Hips shaking, you bucked into his mouth, and even after your release, he made no effort to stop, lifting you to his mouth as he got on his knees, eating you like a meal he’d never have again until he worked his tongue raw, tasting you and only you as your cum coated his mouth. You squirmed, the suction of his lips on your sensitive core in tandem with his tongue viciously swirling inside you overwhelming you beyond words, unable to kick him off as he held both your knees above his head.

“You’re gonna kill me, Hao,” you cried desperately. “Just put it in me.”

He chuckled before setting you down, meeting your lips halfway as he stroked his fully erect cock, massaging the evening’s concoction against your tastebuds, mingling the contrasting flavors as they battled in your mouth while the knowledge of it all pebbled your skin. Meanwhile, he ran his hands over you beneath your shirt, found your nipples, rolling them against his thumbs as his cock rubbed between your folds, ebbing your moans as they buzzed against his lips. “What if I want to play with you first?” He taunted.

You whined, brushing your lips repeatedly over his. “I want you inside me.”

“You’re cute even when you’re needy,” he gushed.

You clasped your hands over his soft, warm cheeks. “Minghao, please…”

He playfully rolled his eyes, kissing into your palm then down your wrist before his teeth playfully started nibbling at your skin. “Fine, because you asked so nicely. Just to let you know, though, I don’t have a condom on me right now, but I’m clean.”

“Then, we don’t need one.”

He grinned, stroking the back of your head. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”

Rubbing his tip down your slit, he savored your whimpers as he drew circles against your clit before sliding his length through your folds and stretching your walls, letting you slowly adjust to his presence. Your jaw slightly dropped as you took a sharp inhale, fingers digging into his shoulders and clinging on to him before you felt him sink deeper inside you, pacing his thrusts in a steady rhythm. Your eyes flit to meet his, feeling the back and forth of his hips as they snapped, while you reveled in each collision.

“Yes please…”

Before losing himself in his pleasure, he was determined to remember how you looked getting lost in yours, taking in your features as they distorted under his care. He first found your eyes–lost in a galaxy with an infinite amount of stars out of the way. Then, his eyes started to follow the slope of your cheeks, flushed to the touch against the back of his hand, saliva leaking out of your swollen lips. And your body with the shirt adhered to you by the sweat on your skin, clinging to your form and proving to him time and time again that you were not only the object of his desires, you were something straight out of his dreams.

“You look, taste, and feel good? Where have you been all my life? Really?” He landed a harsh thrust, pressing down on your nipples and smiling manically at how you whimpered in response, clutching you as you shuddered against him. “You like that?”

You nodded, clawing your hand up his back.

“Mmh, me too,” he drew his lips to your ear. “And I like you. A lot. I wouldn’t let someone go on and use my toothbrush for months if I didn’t.” He slowed down his thrusts, cupping your face to meet your eyes. “You like me too, right?”

Feeling your ears burn, you frantically nodded again, mewling after you felt him nip at them, teeth scraping under your earlobe before an open mouth pressed against the side of your neck. The warmth of his breath sweltering against you as you struggled to carry on with the conversation Minghao was determined to have.

“Yeah, you want me to take you on a real date?” He said into the nape of your neck, moaning into your skin as he dragged his hips, rutting into you like an animal.  He barely made out your soft ‘yes’s in your sharp gasps. He gritted his teeth, taking you by the hips, pushing himself flushed against you. “Fuck, you’re so cute,” he groaned.

His hips took flight while he separated your mouth in a loud moan, feeling you becoming malleable under his touch and growing weaker as you recoiled against him. He lifted your shirt above your chest and neared your stiff peaks, rolling your bud against the base of his tongue as he pinched the other, moving out of pure instinct. You threw your head back, going mad with sexual gratification. Your body spasmed out of your control, yet you craved more.

“Harder,” You gasped.

He scoffed under his breath in disbelief. “You want even more?”

“Yes…I want you to cum inside me. I want to feel everything that’s yours, Minghao.”

Knees buckling at your titillating request, he gripped your ass in both palms, clutching you against him as he rammed himself up inside you, and you’re forced to hold on. “I’ll do you one better,” he offered, “why don’t I just make you mine?”

“I…Oh, god…” Your brain was becoming mush, only processing the sound, taste, smell, sensation of Minghao’s cock as he plunged himself inside you. It fogged up your thoughts, clouded your judgement, and only formed incoherent gibberish that took place of real vocabulary as they passed through your swollen lips.

“Be mine, hmm?” He asked, pleading. “That way I can be yours.”

Captivated by his words, you nodded, feeling him suck the life out of you as your body felt close to giving out, the hilt of his cock bottoming out inside you. You anchored your legs around him, following his pace before you felt something within reach, just seconds away from ripping a scream out of your throat that would surely ensue a noise complaint from one of your neighbors.

“Hao, I’m going to cum, I’m really close,” you meekly warned.

His hand settled against your thigh, nodding. “I can feel it. You’re shaking so hard. Let me have it, I’ll catch you. Every last bit of you.”

Ecstasy was just a word, but Minghao was everything, and you could breathe in that everything. 

Your bodies crushed against each other, lost in heat as you became one. Breaths blended, bodies embraced, only faltering after you long finished the initial orgasms, coming back for more. You embraced  the sheer carnivorous lust that quelled this several month long push and pull, adhering you by the sweat misted on each other's skin before your mouths tenderly met repeatedly.

Sleep felt futile, while the night felt everlasting. Minghao’s company was more than you could ever ask for, and by the time you did sleep, you were too tired to move. You collapsed against each other, bodies drowning in each other’s releases, sheets and pillows stained by the arousal from the evening’s lack of inhibitions. Minghao should’ve been just as tired, but instead he tended to your tired body, leaving kisses in its wake as he cleaned you off and slept alongside you in your clean bed, letting him worry about laundry in the morning.

With your eyes closed, mind in another world, Minghao was brushing the hair away from your face, softly smiling as you gently stirred and nestled closer to him. In response, he pressed a sweet kiss to your temple, warmth blooming in his chest as a grin developed on your face.

“I’ll take you on a proper date. I promise,” he said while you slept. “And If I don’t, pull the bad roommate card on me. You can punish me however you like.”

“…ok, I will.”

[robertreich]

Trump’s Tax Scam: Why Nothing Trickled Down 

The Trump tax cuts were a YUGE scam.

But this November we have a chance to end this trickle-down hoax once and for all.

Donald Trump’s biggest legislative achievement (if you want to even call it that) was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The law permanently slashed corporate taxes and temporarily cut income tax rates mostly for rich individuals through the year 2025. The results were worse than I could have imagined.

Trump and his officials claimed the tax cuts would lead to corporations hiring more workers and would “very conservatively” lead to a $4,000 boost in household incomes.

What actually happened in the years since?

In AT&T’s case, the company saw its overall federal tax bill drop by 81%. It spent 31 times more on dividends and stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders than it paid it in taxes. Meanwhile, it slashed over 40,000 jobs.

That was par for the course with Trump’s tax cuts.

Like AT&T, America’s biggest corporations didn’t use their tax savings to increase productivity or reward workers. Instead, they increased their stock buybacks and dividends.

Many of them, including AT&T, even ended up paying their executives more in some years than what they paid Uncle Sam.    

Those executives (along with other high earners) then got to keep more of their earnings because Trump’s tax cuts for individuals were heavily skewed toward the rich. The lowest earners? They got squat.

And many middle-income families saw their taxes go up.

And those supposed $4,000 raises, did you get one?

The bottom line is that Trump’s tax law fueled a massive transfer of wealth into the hands of the rich and powerful. Corporate profits have skyrocketed. U.S. billionaire wealth has more than DOUBLED since 2018.

The tax cuts have also added $2 trillion to the national debt so far, but that hasn’t stopped Trump and the so-called “party of fiscal responsibility” from doubling down on renewing them.

If Trump is reelected and Republicans take control of Congress, they’re planning to renew the expiring tax cuts for individuals that primarily benefited the rich. This would cost $4.6 trillion over the next decade, more than double the cost of the original tax cuts.

Trump has also threatened to lower the corporate tax rate even further from 21% to 15% — which would cost another $1 trillion.

It’s trickle-down economics on steroids.

All of this would cause the federal deficit and debt to soar — which Republicans will then use as an excuse to cut spending on government programs the rest of us rely on.

But the Democrats have their own tax plan. We can make it a reality this November. What would it do? Just the opposite of Trump’s tax plan.

ONE: It would increase taxes on wealthy individuals with incomes in excess of $400,000 a year, while cutting taxes for lower-income Americans.

TWO: It would make billionaires pay at least 25 percent of their incomes in taxes, still leaving them with plenty left over.

THREE: It would raise the corporate income tax to 28 percent, which is about what it was in 1990.

LASTLY, it would quadruple the tax on stock buybacks to get corporations to invest more of their earnings in workers’ wages and productivity instead of windfalls for investors.

So the real choice is between the Republicans’ plan to make the rich much richer, and the Democrats’ plan to make the rich pay their fair share and provide what Americans need.

Which do you want?

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Last night during a town hall with the Spanish-language news network Univision, Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris received a question from a person with Long COVID who applied for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) three years ago and still hasn’t received a decision on her case.

Martha, who is 62, had a heart attack in 2020 and was later diagnosed with Long COVID, “which will disable me for the rest of my life,” she said. The disease has caused her to lose her job and become homeless. She asked Harris how disabled people could better access disability insurance.

Harris responded with a lengthy answer that advocates and many people with Long COVID said was inadequate. While the Democratic presidential nominee cited that she helped recognize Long COVID as a disability under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), the ADA only provides protection for people requesting accommodations and does not apply to benefits programs. Many criticized her for failing to answer the question or offer any immediate plans or policies that would expedite SSDI cases, fund Long COVID research, or prevent more cases of the disease.

A new National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report on Long COVID as a disability, which we covered earlier this year, will allegedly be used by the Social Security Administrion (SSA) to improve their processes for Long COVID-related applications.

Mother Jones reporterJullia Métraux wrote about Martha’s question and Harris’s response today, pointing out that over 30,000 people died on waiting lists for SSDI decisions in the fiscal year 2023.

The Sick Times and The 19th reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on how the campaign will recognize and address Long COVID response but did not receive a response.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Stephen Semler

Fully aware of the increasingly violent crackdowns on students and teachers protesting his enabling of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, Biden greenlit an even harsher police response this week.

Biden had already given police the greenlight to behave violently through his budgets. The 2020 protests against police brutality were met with rampant police brutality, but after entering office in 2021, Biden dramatically scaled up federal subsidies to police through regular appropriations legislation (for fiscal years 2022 through 2024), and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

[timeismyally]

I’ve seen a few reviews of The Secret History tonight and they all fell in the ‘the first half was good but once the mystery was revealed it meandered and didn’t go anywhere’ camp. Which just shows that most people who read The Secret History haven’t encountered Greek Tragedy before.

Unlike familiar heroes journeys or mystery novels of the 20th century, greek tragedies were typically told in two parts - the violent or tragic act shown to the audience, followed by the characters responsible meeting their fates. TSH is a modern retelling of a Greek Tragedy - Richard is the chorus witnessing the downfall of the players for what they did to Bunny, and for all the choices they made along the way.

A tragedy is never about the whodunnit, or the why, tragedies act as a warning of what will happen to you should you follow the same path. It’s why it is so fucking brilliant; it’s satire of everything wrong with academia and fiscal elitism told through the vessel of an academic pursuit typically reserved for those who are a part of that elitist class.

I think you need a basic understanding of Greek Tragedy to realise just how brilliant it is. Thank god for Greek Theatre in second year uni - a semester of Antigone didn’t have much of an impact then, but it certainly helped me appreciate a fantastic novel.

[fir-fireweed]

I'm sorry, but GenAI for personal use still isn't okay. You're still benefitting off a program that scrapes and steals the work of others whether your doing it for personal use or for money. People should be encouraged to actually create, not to have a program spit things out for them to then share and act like they're the ones who made it. It's the same thing as reposting art or frankendolling various others together and claiming the result as your own. This goes for other 'creative' GenAI, too, including writing and not just drawn or painted art.

I want to preface this by saying I agree with you. You make excellent points and you’re correct in how GenAI tools operate. And I absolutely don’t think anyone should use it in a professional or commercial capacity. To give context, this was in regards to the ai art of a person’s MC. It wasn’t created for a game they’re developing. It wasn’t an ai generation of my or anyone else’s original characters. It was their own OC.

People should be encouraged to create on their own, yes, but some people do not have the ability or even the confidence to do so. I’m not going to tell someone they must do their personal art in a particular way, especially when the alternative may not be fiscally or technically possible.

Like any tool, GenAI needs to be used responsibly, with full understanding of what you’re doing. Just as with social media, I’m not going to tell you to stay off it. (Even though tumblr and LinkedIn are literally the only ones I bother with anymore. Quite the polar opposites, I know.) What I do encourage is to use the tool responsibly. If someone creates art or stories or anything of the like with ai and claims to have made it themselves, that’s a problem. So if anything, shame on me and the original poster for not specifying it as ai art. That’s valid. But if they used it for their own personal use and are honest and upfront about it, I don’t see the problem.

I also encourage you to support artists. Don’t just condemn ai art. Commission real artwork, share it, make appreciative comments about it, go to art museums and shows and drag your friends with you.

I understand this can be a touchy subject and that not everyone will agree with me. I value your opposing viewpoint and I truly do appreciate you sharing it. Thank you.

[maaarine]

A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System (Wired, Feb 4 2025)

"A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.

Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS).

Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy. (…)

Control of those mechanisms could allow someone to choke off money to specific federal agencies or even individuals, a fear that Democrats have expressed about DOGE.

On Monday, Senate Democrats warned of DOGE’s encroachment into the payment system.

“Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.

“What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

The fight over whether DOGE could access Treasury systems led to a previously reported standoff between acting Treasury secretary David Lebryk and Musk’s associates.

Lebryk was placed on administrative leave last week and subsequently resigned.

“Lebryk’s resignation set an example,” a source tells WIRED.

“Any idea of resistance or noncompliance seems to be fading in the wake of that, and everything I have heard from leadership suggests they intend to give the ‘DOGE’ operatives what they are asking for.”

[talonabraxas]

Capricorn - Black Sea Goat Talon Abraxas Big things are coming. For everybody. But most significantly, Capricorns. Capricorns have seen several lunar cycles, in 2024 alone. Now when you factor in the last 16 years or so, that's almost too many to count. But, here's the thing. This will be the first new moon in the sign of Capricorn, which will take place without Pluto being stationed in the zodiac. And for those that haven't patiently weathered Pluto's immensely potent energies of death, destruction and transformation for over a decade-and-a-half, they won't truly gauge how doubly gratifying Capricorn's first Pluto-free new moon in a long, long time feels.

For the rest too, the energies swirling are positive and given the timing — just 2 days before New year — it's the perfect time to set your intentions and manifest your dream life. After all, that's what new moons are for! If you have any bit of doubt about how truly special today's date is, just know that the new moon is also a black moon rising, something that happens once in every 29 years! Here's what each of the zodiacs are being encouraged to focus on. Fire signs

A big positive boom (or many small booms) in your career is on the cards. But as you are served success on a platter, you are being asked to channel your energies into being proactive, and not getting complacent in your approach to work. Complacency won't be a problem for Leos as they will find themselves doubly motivated, marching the front line when it comes to shouldering responsibility, and happily at that too! For Sagittarians, great things await for your fiscal situation, given you are ready to act on as much agency as you have. Earth signs

Taurians are known to keep surfing their comfort zone, but this new moon in Capricorn offers you the push you need to finally find yourself in the big leagues. And for the zodiac of the moment, Capricorn, as long as you believe in your potential and out yourself out there, things will unfold like butter on hot toast for you. A piping hot romance is definitely on the cards for Virgos, just be consciously tapped into the present and let your fun and flirty side run amuck for a bit. Air signs

Geminis are being nudged to realise that it's okay to depend on people and ask for help. Letting yourself be vulnerable can truly open exciting doors for you. Librans have probably been wanting to branch out into their own space for a really long time — this is your sign, and this is your portal. Take action! And Aquarians are being asked to indulge in some self-love activities, whatever that looks like for you, considering this is their first new moon with Pluto stationed in their zodiac. Water signs

Commitments and connections, be it platonic, business or romantic, are on the horizon for Cancers — all that hard work from the year past will finally be coming to fruition! Scorpios are being encouraged to the gnawing travel bug that's been trying to get their attention — this and using your voice to speak your truth are the key themes for this new moon. And the only mantra Pisces needs for this new moon is networking, networking and more networking (please, we know you love it).

Happy manifesting!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 4, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 05, 2025

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[govtshutdown]

Get your popcorn (or your tissues)

[urialnathanonwright]

Trump’s Prescription for Greed: Undoing Progress at the Expense of American Lives

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such a bald-faced display of cruelty masquerading as leadership, but here we are again. President Trump’s decision to roll back President Biden’s executive order aimed at lowering prescription drug costs for millions of Americans is as heartless as it is infuriating. This isn’t about politics. It’s about greed, power, and prioritizing Big Pharma profits over the health and well-being of everyday Americans.

Biden’s executive order, for those keeping score, wasn’t some radical leftist fever dream. It was a practical step to explore innovative healthcare payment models—things like capping co-pays for critical generic drugs, pooling states’ bargaining power for high-cost medications, and holding pharmaceutical companies accountable when they drag their feet on clinical trials. You know, ideas designed to save lives and money. But Trump, in his infinite wisdom, decided all of that was too “unpopular” and “radical.”

Unpopular? Tell that to the millions of seniors drowning in prescription costs. Radical? Only if you think making insulin affordable is akin to overthrowing the government. Oh wait, we already know Trump’s bar for what qualifies as “radical” is laughably low.

And let’s talk about the timing. This rollback isn’t just symbolic—it’s sabotaging the progress set to unfold. The Inflation Reduction Act is finally delivering real relief to Medicare beneficiaries. By next year, out-of-pocket prescription costs will be capped at $2,000 annually, and Medicare-negotiated drug prices will start rolling in by 2026. But Trump’s reversal makes it clear: his priorities are with the lobbyists, not the people.

The models Biden’s administration worked to explore weren’t just pipe dreams—they were grounded in fiscal responsibility and common sense. Lower co-pays, incentivizing faster drug trials, and leveraging collective bargaining power could have reshaped how we think about prescription costs. Instead, Trump decided to tear down this potential before it could bloom, all in the name of political spite.

This isn’t just bad policy—it’s dangerous. It’s a betrayal of the millions of Americans who depend on affordable medications to survive. It’s a middle finger to working families, seniors, and anyone who believes that healthcare is a human right.

So let’s call it what it is: Trump has taken the side of corporate greed over human need. Again. But here’s the thing about everyday Americans—they’re paying attention. And they’re tired of watching the wealthy and powerful treat their lives like a line item on a balance sheet.

Mark my words, the backlash is coming. Because when you mess with people’s ability to afford the medicine that keeps them alive, they don’t forget. And come election day, they’ll be ready to make their voices heard. Loudly.

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 5

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wiredreporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Mediareported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

—

[tomorrowusa]

We need to smash the mythology of Republicans being fiscally responsible and good at economics. Shoveling vast amounts of money into the pockets of venal oligarchs who don't need it is not good for the country.

Former president Donald Trump approved almost twice as much borrowing as current President Joe Biden during his four years in office, according to the Committee for a Responsible Budget (CFRB). Trump, who presided over the federal government from 2016 to 2020, approved $8.4 trillion in new ten-year debt. But incumbent president Biden, who defeated Trump four years ago, has approved $4.3 trillion in new borrowing, said a new report by the committee. As for reducing the budget deficit, Trump cut it by $443 billion. The Biden administration has reduced it by $1.9 trillion. The U.S. is sitting on a total of $34.73 trillion in national debt, accrued over the country's history, according to government data.

I often say that Republicans create a mess when in office. And when they're voted out, the Republicans then try to make a campaign issue out of Democrats not cleaning up the Republican mess quickly enough.

During the Trump years, his tax cuts added $1.9 trillion in U.S. debt, while the budget passed in 2018 and 2019 generated borrowing of $2.1 trillion. Those two policy moves contributed some of the largest debt increases during Trump's tenure. Over the last three and a half years, under Biden, some of the largest contributors to the national debt included the appropriations bills of fiscal year 2022 and 2023 that generated $1.4 trillion of borrowing, while the American Rescue Plan Act was responsible for $2.1 trillion in debt, according to CFRB.

The Trump tax breaks for the filthy rich will automatically expire in a few years. That's why multi-billionaires are ignoring Trump's dictatorial behavior and criminality and are dropping HŪGE donations into Trump's campaign coffers so that he can renew their tax breaks if he gets back into office. Their rapacious greed is downright pathological.

When those tax breaks expire, provided Biden wins, the debt will then level off as it did during the Clinton administration after Democrats raised taxes on the filthy rich. Bill Clinton ended his presidency with a budget surplus.

As long as we're talking economics, a reminder that 90.9% of all recessions of the past 71 years began under Republicans.

... just sayin'.

[democracyunderground]

DID YOU VOTE FOR ELON MUSK TO HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE PAYMENTS SYSTEM, AND YOUR TAX REFUNDS ?

"Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his pro-austerity Department of Government Efficiency tried to access key systems responsible for paying out the federal government’s salaries and bills, pushing a high-ranking career civil servant to quit the Treasury Department.

According to The Washington Post, David Lebryk, the current deputy secretary of the Treasury Department, is expected to leave the agency after decades of nonpolitical service.

Sources told the Post that Lebryk pushed back on attempts by Musk surrogates to access the nation’s system for doling out paychecks, Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds and federal contracts.

The Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which administers the payment systems, says it disbursed $5.4 trillion across 1.3 billion payments in fiscal year 2023. It’s unclear what Musk’s office wanted to accomplish by gaining access to the system, but it represents an escalation in his attempt to take hold of the federal government.

Though the legality of Musk’s efforts to access the systems is unclear, President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order authorizing the DOGE scheme instructed federal agencies to give the X owner’s group “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

Earlier this week, Trump’s heads of the budget and personnel management offices made what critics say are drastic and even illegal attempts to shave down the bureaucracy.

On Monday, Matthew Vaeth, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a memo freezing nearly all federal grants and loans and paralyzing essential services like Medicaid. The White House later rescinded that order after a judge blocked it."

[olderthannetfic]

I know with social media the way it is, and how horrible the us political climate is, that this sort of response to Audrey as an OTW candidate was probably just a ticking time bomb. But damn, I went to her actual Twitter, and honestly? She seems like one of those old-style, fiscal conservative Republicans who may want to change things from within the party, however unlikely that may be. She literally pointed out how small govt means less govt messing with our rights, and how the current Republican national party is hypocritical about that.

So many of her typical tweetings (?) are pretty socially progressive. If she's in deep south Missouri, it may be that she had to run Republican for any chance of changing things for the better in her local area.

I do not support Republicans as a whole. I think they ARE dragging the country to a horrific, fundamentalist grave. But she is an individual, and from what I can tell, supportive of lgbtq rights and freedom of speech on the internet. I likely would not have voted for her anyway, but nothing she has done or said so far has earned her the hate and vitriol she has received over such a short period.

Tiffany was ALSO not a CCP spy working for the Chinese govt. She was literally not even in confirmed to BE in China for fucks sake. Chinese people have been leaving the country in droves! Was she a good fit for the board? Hell no! But she wasn't voted in, was she?

I'm just so exhausted of people assuming the absolute worst and going on a hate campaign based off their own misinformed assumptions. This is not helping anyone see the "left" or "proshippers" or whatever our "side" is, as reasonable, helpful people.

I'm exhausted of defending people whose positions I don't even agree with, because the people I do "agree" with are acting so abhorrently.

What are your thoughts on this?

--

Yeah, that's my read on her in the context of local US politics. Running as an independent and then a Republican where she is is typical of people with her type of platform. It doesn't make her Fundie Satan.

Like Tiffany, there are plenty of different reasons not to vote for her, so we don't need to worry so much about the minutia of her political stances. Only if she were a great candidate but with a couple of red flags would we need to dig into this.

Like I said last year, working for OTW means having people assume the worst constantly and come for you with pitchforks. There are reasons it's not attractive above and beyond internal mismanagement. It's hard to get enough people to run for Board to even have a contested election. We usually do these days, but in the past, we often didn't. It was just people taking turns to jump on the grenade.

This kind of response to someone agreeing to the worst job in OTW just reaffirms that it's not worth it and discourages future candidates.

I think everyone should chillax and vote in somebody else.

ETA: and while this has been sitting in the queue, it has become a moot point anyway.