Author name: moderat ereport

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals just did scuzzy businesses a solid by throwing out the click-to-cancel rule. Finalized during the Biden administration, back when the Federal Trade Commission was actually doing its job, the rule would have required companies to make canceling their services as easy as signing up.  This rule was a slam dunk, because literally no consumer is clamoring for the right to drive to the gym to cancel your free trial or to sit on the phone with a newspaper hell-bent on keeping you trapped in a subscription. But companies desperately want that, so they ran to a friendly court to whine about how unfair it was to rob them of the ability to drain consumer pocketbooks.  Going to the 8th Circuit was a pretty safe bet, as the court has only one Democratic appointee. Otherwise, it’s wall-to-wall Republicans eager to lend a helping hand to businesses. Five days before the rule was supposed to go into effect, the 8th Circuit obligingly blocked the rule, providing American consumers with the god-given freedom to have unwanted subscription charges hammer their bank accounts.  “On the Court” by Clay Bennett One of the bases for the ruling was that the FTC failed to do a preliminary regulatory analysis, required when a rule’s impact on the economy would exceed $100 million. Of course, the only way companies can complain that making it easier to cancel things would cost at least nine figures is to acknowledge that trapping people into paying for services they can’t cancel is a significant moneymaker. The Trump administration could always choose to restart the rulemaking process and do the necessary regulatory analysis, but these days, the FTC is not really all that jazzed about consumer protection. Instead, the agency is currently busy investigating Elon Musk’s enemies and making merger approvals contingent on companies agreeing to let the administration dictate what advertisers they choose to work with and what platforms they will advertise on. What company doesn’t love the idea of being forced to buy ads on Trump’s social media network or to have their ads appear alongside Grok’s open praise for Adolf Hitler over on X? Though the FTC did go to court to defend the rule, the Trump administration had already tipped its hand in mid-May when it delayed the implementation of the click-to-cancel rule for two months, which just happened to be long enough for the appeals court to issue its ruling. The word salad justification for the delay was “Having conducted a fresh assessment of the burdens that forcing compliance by this date would impose, the Commission has determined that the original deferral period insufficiently accounted for the complexity of compliance”—which sounds like giving businesses a pass because they said it’s just too darn hard for them to obey.  Since Trump illegally fired the Democratic FTC appointees months ago, there’s no real worry that any commissioners would come forward to say that maybe it is good to protect consumers from sleazy corporate tactics. So now, you can continue racking up unwanted fees with dirtbag companies whose business plan relies on keeping you trapped. Freedom!

A cartoon by Jack Ohman. Related | The Texas flash flood is a preview of the chaos to come

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Trump revives his tyrannical obsession with taking over DC Between this and New York, Trump really wants to take over cities he supposedly hates. Musk’s anti-woke AI chatbot goes full Nazi—then gets shut off Wait a second … the Nazi’s robot sidekick is also a Nazi?! 🤯 Remember when the president wasn’t supposed to touch student loans? Biden wants to help students? Unconstitutional. Trump wants to hurt them? Totally fine! Cartoon: Emergency alert! A light rain will become a weather emergency with this idiotic administration. Trump’s cruel purge of federal workers just got even easier The legislative branch caves to Trump, and the judicial branch is in his pocket. What do they call that again? GOP leader of Senate demands praise for working He did it, everybody. He went to work. 👏 Click here to see more cartoons.

On Monday, President Donald Trump’s private media company launched a streaming service that features content from another private media company, which just so happens to have a White House press pool spot. Seems fine! Truth+ is the latest offering from Trump Media, a company that purports to be a multi-channel powerhouse but is really just a vehicle for Trump and his family to launch low-rent grift after low-rent grift.  Truth+ joins Trump Mobile, a low-rent cell phone plan; Truth.Fi, a low-rent financial services firm that will offer “America First” investments; and whatever other low-rent crypto grifts the Trump family is pushing these days. Anything for Trump to profit off of the presidency.  The new streaming service will feature Newsmax as a “flagship channel”, whatever that means. It’s genuinely pathetic that Newsmax, an outlet that has roughly 10% the viewership of Fox News, is going to be the star of the show. It’s also genuinely problematic that Trump is entering into a business partnership with a media company that he rewarded with a press pool spot despite Newsmax’s meager viewership. Related | Trump family’s latest grift is coming for your phone If this absolute rat’s nest of conflicts of interest wasn’t enough, how about the fact that the announcement of the launch boosted the stock price of both Trump Media and Newsmax? Other outlets in the Truth+ lineup include luminaries such as Real America’s Voice, One America News Network, and Patriot TV. It’s good that OANN got a spot, since its viewership has been so low that it got booted from cable TV. Maybe the combination of Truth+ and primetime host Matt Gaetz will make the magic happen for the far-right network.  These outlets don’t have meaningful viewership or distinctive coverage, but they do have an in with the most corrupt president who is eager to make a buck. And make no mistake: Trump wants to affiliate with these tiny sycophantic outlets precisely because they are tiny and sycophantic. He loathes actual media coverage. The notion that a company might not praise Trump 24/7 is inconceivable to him.  He reacts to balanced—rather than subservient—news coverage by suing networks and demanding bribes—er, donations—to his nonexistent presidential library. He got $16 million from CBS News and $15 million from Disney by threatening the companies. Surely he’s happy about the rightward lurch of the Washington Post, once a venerable American icon.  The only real successes Trump Media has seen are in the crypto space, where buying the Trump family scam du jour is a quick and easy way to bribe the president. It’s not clear how Trump will make money off a streaming network of hard-right underperformers, but if anyone can figure out a way, it’s Trump.

PoliticusUSA is 100% reader-supported and needs your help. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now Sen. Bernie Sanders chose to spend his time at a HELP Committee hearing discussing one of the most pressing issues in the country. Sanders discussed the healthcare crisis that the reconciliation bill, signed into law by Trump, is expected to cause. Sen. Sanders said: There is no question that cybersecurity and protecting the privacy of Americans’ health care records are important issues that we need to deal with. But, Mr. Chairman, let me be very clear. That is not the issue that is right now on the minds of the American people. What people are worried about is the catastrophic impact that the reconciliation bill that was passed last week will have on the health and well-being of the American people. And that is the issue that I’m going to be focused on today. That legislation, passed by one vote here in the Senate, will be making the largest cut to Medicaid in American history to pay for the largest tax break for billionaires in American history. At a time when our current health care system is broken, dysfunctional and cruel — 85 million today are uninsured or underinsured. This bill will make a horrible situation even worse. This legislation will cut Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act by more than $1.1 trillion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this bill, along with the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits, will cause 17 million people to lose their health insurance. Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and health care economists at the University of Pennsylvania have found that these health care policies would cause over 50,000 people in our country to die unnecessarily every year. That’s what happens when you can’t get to a doctor. I am delighted that one of the lead researchers of this report, Dr. Alison Galvani, is here with us today to talk more about that study. Mr. Chairman: it is not rocket science. You’re a doctor, you know this. If people don’t have access to health care, if they can’t get to a doctor when they need to, people will suffer and tens of thousands will die. It happens today and it will only get worse. PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Make no mistake about it: This bill is a death sentence for working-class and low-income Americans. Further, as a result of this bill, more than 300 rural hospitals are now at risk of closing down altogether or substantially reducing their services. That is not my estimate. That’s what the Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina recently estimated. And we are already beginning to see the devastating impact this bill will have on rural America: The Curtis Medical Center in Southwest Nebraska has already announced that it will be shutting down because it cannot withstand the cuts to Medicaid contained in this bill. It’s not just rural hospitals that are now in crisis as a result of this legislation. According to a recent survey from the American Health Care Association, as a result of this bill, 27% of nursing homes have indicated that they will be forced to close their doors and 58% will have to reduce staff. And it’s not just nursing homes. Health care researchers at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University have found that this bill will be a disaster for community health centers. They have estimated that as a result of the passage of this bill, over 40% of community health center sites will shut down. Today, there are over 15,000 community health center clinics throughout America. This could result in the shutting down of some 9,000 of them. And it’s not just community health centers, it’s not just nursing homes and it’s not just individuals. This legislation will substantially increase the uninsured rate in every state in this country. As a result of this bill, the uninsured rate in my own state of Vermont would go up from 3.3% to 6%. In Louisiana, the Chairman’s state, the uninsured rate will go up from 6.7% to 12.4%. In Florida, the uninsured rate will go up from 10.4% to 18.8%. In Texas, the second largest state in this country, the uninsured rate will go up to 20% — in the United States, in the richest country in the history of the world. Mr. Chairman, this is an issue that needs to be explained to the American people, and I look forward to discussing it with all of our panelists. Video: Republicans want to pretend like 17 million Americans getting kicked off of their healthcare is business as usual. Now that the GOP has caused the number of uninsured to skyrocket in the United States, they can go back to holding hearings about other topics. The American people aren’t going to move on and forget about what Republicans have done. Democrats and their allies like Bernie Sanders aren’t going to allow the crisis that Republicans have created to be forgotten. Trump and his party want the people who are losing food and healthcare to be forgotten. It is up to everyone else to make sure that it doesn’t happen. What do you think about Sen. Sanders’s remarks? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

Live by the conspiracy theory, die by the conspiracy theory.  As the MAGA world implodes over its failed Epstein list obsession—maybe because President Donald Trump is on it—let’s not forget another unhinged conspiracy it promised to solve: chemtrails. Yes, chemtrails. Last August, Health and Human Services Secretary and full-time conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a bonkers chemtrails post on X, vowing to “stop this crime.” Then, in an April appearance on “Dr. Phil,” Kennedy doubled down on chemtrails.  “That is not happening in my agency. We don’t do that. It’s done—we think—by DARPA, and a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. Those materials are put in jet fuel,” he said. “I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it,” he said. “We’re bringing on somebody who’s gonna think only about that, find out who’s doing that and hold them accountable.” The chemtrail conspiracy theory falsely claims that the white trails left by planes are chemical or biological agents sprayed by the government for sinister purposes—like weather control, mind control, or population suppression. Contrails, short for condensation trails, are seen behind an airplane. In reality, they’re contrails—short for condensation trails—made of nothing more than ice crystals formed when hot, humid jet exhaust hits cold upper-atmosphere air. It’s basic physics. If the air is humid enough, the trail lingers. If it’s dry, it disappears quickly. There’s no spraying. No mind control. Just water vapor and science. And DARPA, which stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is not a secret weather-manipulation unit. If Kennedy genuinely believes this nonsense, he could just pick up the phone and ask his buddy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whether the military is dosing the skies with mind-control mist.  But creating a taxpayer-funded position for a full-time chemtrail detective is easier than just admitting that you don’t understand clouds or condensation. And for a MAGA base still emotionally shattered by the Epstein list flop, Kennedy’s jet-fuel hysteria is just another hit of the good stuff. Because when one conspiracy theory fizzles, there’s always another waiting in the sky.