Losing My Perspicacity, May 23, 2025

The terrifying provisions in Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill you need to know about

Author

Julie DiCaro
May 23, 2025

NoGood morning and Happy Free Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me.

Yesterday, I started off LMP by talking about Donald Trump refusing to believe that “white genocide” in South Africa is, as he would claim, “fake news,” despite being assured it wasn’t happening by no less an authority than …. (checks notes) the sitting President of South Africa. In response to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pushback against the much-debunked “genocide of white farmers,” Trump played a propaganda video for journalists and held up what he claimed was a photo of murdered white farmers.

One problem, in addition to the white crosses Trump claimed were “graves” of white farmers (they weren’t), one of the photos he used to make his case was actually a photo taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mixed into the deck of papers he unveiled before South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa, however, was a months-old blog post featuring a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death," Trump said as he flipped through the headlines, which he said were published in "the last few days."

***

"Look, here's burial sites all over the place," said Trump. "These are all white farmers that are being buried."

***

But the image is a screengrab from a February YouTube video of Red Cross workers responding after women were raped and burned alive during a mass jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to its caption.

(emphasis added)

If you’ve ever argued with the MAGA crowd on social media, this is not at all surprising. The information they base their worldviews on is often inaccurate, taken out of context, or flat-out false. But it’s something else to see the shoddily-researched claims making their way into the hands of the President of the United States, much less him using them as a basis to form America’s public policy.

Elon Musk leaned into a false claim to satisfy his persecution complex, and now white South Africans are being given the red carpet “refugee” treatment. In contrast, actual refugees are being trafficked to a jungle prison in El Salvador. I know we mock the “I did my own research” crowd, but now is a great time to do your own research and double-check any claim the Trump White House makes. Just don’t double-check at places like Breitbart or The Daily Caller or via any video featuring Jordan Peterson.

Is America great again, yet?

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Today: What’s hidden in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill;” Trump continues his war on higher education and international students; SCOTUS Justice Amy Coney-Barrett does something right (again!); Indigenous Americans sue the United States over residential schools; The Tush-Push lives to fight another day; and The High Note.

Here we go.

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What’s hiding in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

Earlier this week, it looked like Trump’s budget proposal, aka, the “big, beautiful bill” was in trouble in the House. Not because it wants to take Medicaid away from millions and gut what social safety net we have in this country, but because it wasn’t cruel enough for conservative members of the GOP. Luckily, Mike Johnson and company were able to make even deeper cuts in aid to the poor in service of tax cuts for America’s richest, so we’re on to the Senate.

Last week, we ran down a list of nefarious items hiding in the budget proposal. Items that do things like giving Trump increased power to attack charities and prohibit state and local AI regulation. But there are a few more bits hidden in Trump’s bill that Americans desperately need to know about.

The first last-minute addition by Republicans would bar the Affordable Care Act (which covers approximately 45 million Americans) from covering abortion and gender-affirming care for all recipients.

In addition to the largest cuts to Medicaid in US history, the bill contains provisions that have alarmed health care advocates since they first showed up in earlier versions of the bill. Among them is a plan seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, which the organization warns will affect its ability to provide critical services, including pap smears, cancer screenings, and birth control.

But on Thursday, two last-minute additions went even further: The reconciliation bill that was passed now seeks to ban Affordable Care Act health care plans from covering abortion and gender-affirming care for all Medicaid patients, including adults, after initially proposing to ban care for just minors.

Many states already ban the ACA from covering abortion care, but 13 states require it to do so. Meanwhile, the continuing attack on the trans community is nothing short of intentionally cruel and bigoted.

The provision seeking to ban gender-affirming care could affect the 152,000 trans adults who are on Medicaid, according to the UCLA Williams Institute. As of 2019, a dozen states already excluded coverage for such care in their Medicaid plans, but 18 states and DC. included, or were in the process of including, gender-affirming care in their Medicaid plans, according to the Williams Institute.

Jennifer C. Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a civil rights nonprofit supporting LGBTQ rights, told Mother Jones that the inclusion was an “overt, mean-spirited, unjustifiable attack on transgender people by members of the House.” She hopes it won’t pass the Senate, but if it does, it will be challenged. “There’s no legitimate reason for it. And so whatever standard of constitutional review is used, it should fail,” she emphasized.

 

Another item in the reconciliation bill headed to the Senate would severely limit the power of the federal courts to enforce their decisions.

A provision "hidden" in the sweeping budget bill that passed the U.S. House on Thursday seeks to limit the ability of courts—including the U.S. Supreme Court—from enforcing their orders.

"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued," the provision in the bill, which is more than 1,000 pages long, says.

The provision "would make most existing injunctions—in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases, and others—unenforceable," Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told Newsweek. "It serves no purpose but to weaken the power of the federal courts."

Gosh, I wonder what could have led to such a proposal? It’s almost like Trump has been losing in court frequently and is trying to legislate his way around America’s system of checks and balances. I would point out that this provision is entirely unconstitutional, but so is at least 50 percent of everything else this administration does.

Friendly reminder that we don’t have to sit idly by and watch this garbage bill get voted into law. Call your reps. Email your reps. Show up at their office. Tag them on social media. We have the power to stop this.

Trump continues his war on Harvard and international students

A reminder before we begin of the widely-believed rumor that Barron Trump was rejected from both Harvard and Columbia.

Indeed. Yesterday, Trump leveled up his attack on Harvard by barring the school from enrolling international students.

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, delivering a sharp punishment to the elite institution for refusing to bow to the administration’s policy demands.

“Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

How can Trump do this? As with everything else, his level of pettiness is unmatched. He can’t just order Harvard not to enroll any international students. But what he can do is order DHS and his attack dog, Kristi Noem, to bar Harvard from access to the SEVIS system, which the school needs to get through the red tape of enrolling foreign students under the VISA system.

As with all of Trump’s other BS, this one will end up in court sooner rather than later. Stay tuned.

Amy Coney-Barrett surprises us again

Our favorite legal handmaiden seems to have become self-aware. Is she more reasonable than we thought?

The Supreme Court deadlocked on one of its biggest cases of the term on Thursday, delaying—for now—another blow to the separation of church and state.

The 4–4 split left in place a lower court decision prohibiting the creation of a taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. But this legal battle is far from over: The court will almost certainly revisit the issue in a future case when no justice is recused. And when it does, the majority seems likely to rule that the First Amendment requires states to establish and fund religious charter schools. Still, Thursday’s divided ruling is a welcome reprieve from the Supreme Court’s crusade to dismantle secular public education in America.

The lower court's decision blocking the school stood because Coney-Barrett recused herself from the case due to a close friendship with one of the lawyers involved, and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the three liberal (women) justices.

Wonders never cease.

Indigenous Americans are suing over residential schools

There’s a great podcast out there called Finding Cleo that educated me about the immense trauma and damage residential schools in the US and Canada inflicted on our indigenous people. Before that, I didn’t even know such places existed.

Two Native American tribes on Thursday filed what they called the first major lawsuit against the U.S. government’s notorious system of Indian boarding schools, which for decades splintered families and stripped Indigenous children of their language and culture.

The tribes argued that the federal government betrayed the promises it made in treaties to provide for the education of tribal youths. Instead, using money set aside for tribes, the government shunted Native children into schools where they were beaten, abused and forced to assimilate.

I included a gift link above in case you want to learn more about the harrowing history of residential schools.

Survivors have described being snatched from their parents and sent to schools where they were hit, stripped and sexually abused, forbidden from practicing Native religions and forced to convert to Christianity. Reports on the boarding schools say the system left a legacy of shattered communities and long-term psychological trauma and ill health.

A truly dark chapter in America’s history.

The Tush Push lives!

If you’re old enough to remember the Chicago Bears’ play where William “The Refrigerator” Perry tried to shove/toss Walter Payton over the goal line, you know that the “tush push” has been around for a long time. The modern version of the QB sneak-with-a-little-help-from-your-friends was in danger of being outlawed by the league, but righteousness and justice have prevailed.

The votes are in and the tush push lives to fight another day. A proposal to ban the play — which the Philadelphia Eagles made famous — failed to pass Wednesday at the NFL's owners meetings in Eagan, Minnesota.

That was far from certain heading into the day. While the Eagles were the most vocal about their opposition to the ban — for obvious reasons — personnel with other teams seemed more on board with the idea.

In the end, the Eagles won that fight ... but barely. The proposal — which needed 24 votes to pass — received 22 out of 32 votes, falling two short of approval.

You can see how your team voted if you check out the link above. Mine voted against it, but I think they might have just been voting against the Eagles. Which…fair.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Can we hire this gentleman to speak to Congress on our behalf?

@beezay22

#dei #equity #diversity #inclusion #schoolboard #Virginia #virginiabeach #resist #fyp #news

Hey, survive and advance out there today. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend! I’ll see you on Tuesday.

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